#kdrambles

No sportsperson is an antagonist destroying the world order and none is a protagonist saving the day.

I think of a poem by Kurt Vonnegut;

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'...

In our endeavour to answer the question "why, why, why?" we begin assigning moral weight to wins and losses - maybe to fuel our own feeling of moral superiority, and thus creating moral proxy wars of sorts, or because we simply don't want to accept a world that is unfair, indiscriminate and random.

But that isn't how the world works, that isn't how sports work. Sports does not know good and bad, it does not know right from wrong.

Sports has no moral compass.

But humans need answers, and if no cause-and-effect is evident, we will make them. Because;

...Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.”

But remember;

First of all, the 'era' in question is like, one season.

Plus does everyone not remember when they were calling Carlos washed and saying the ATP was wide open??? Like that was February bro😭

And i really dont understand these "fans" - why are you here when dont think anyone is even good? the whole tour is so washed cuz they cant compete with sincaraz and even sincaraz arent that good because the dont actually have any competition. Do you even like tennis then? You dont have to watch🧍🏾‍♂️

And they refuse to tune into the WTA.

Some of y’all don’t like the sport fr😭

This is related to the whole thing about the women’s Roland garros final, and ik the discourse around it is exacerbated by how epic the men’s final was and people being plain old misogynistic, but tennis that is hitting winners from 10ft behind the baseline isn’t the only tennis that matters.

I think tennis can be divided into 3 components; mental, physical and technical.

But none of these three things are more important than the other, and excelling in any out of them, is a more than valid way to victory.

Winning by outlasting an opponent physically is as impressive and equal to blasting them off the court.

Being more composed than your opponent, handling nerves and pressure better, is a valid victory.

And i wanna remind everyone that tennis is a game of mistakes; sometimes, complicated analysis isn’t necessary, you miss too much and lose. So missing less than your opponent is valid victory.

In conditions where pretty tennis was simply impossible, toughening up and keeping the ball in the court was the way to victory.

And instead of appreciating the beauty of Coco’s physicality and mentality, we turn to 70 unforced errors.

And I think it exposes a flaw in a lot of tennis fans’ and even some players (cough sabalenka cough) thinking. Where solid players are seen as inherently inferior to players who swing out and have crazy unforced error and winner counts.

Neither of these player archetypes are inherently better than the other, but if you keep swinging and missing, then maybe you need to take a page out of the “pushers” book.