Public Servants Should Emulate Men in Doubles – The American Spectator
The young Americans were looking good on serve, and you wondered, maybe a little too idly, whether the two caballeros from south of the border were intimidated. This was Washington, the center of power in the South American mind. You get on a bus just outside the stadium where they were playing for the title, and, in a few minutes, if you catch one of the express S-9s, you are at 1600, home of the most powerful man on earth.
Maybe it had nothing to do with global power. It could have been the Americans’ serves. The first set would end with 10 aces on their side, only one on the Argentines’ — Máximo González and Andrés Molteni, hombres de las pampas. And, more telling, the Yanks — both recent varsity in big tennis programs — had a first-serve point rate of 89 percent, remarkable under any circumstances, to their opponents’ 61 percent.
That would have been a problem, except that, as experienced doubles men like González and Molteni know, in this version of tennis. the rule of thumb is that if you are counting on your service to win, you are in trouble, as in singles but more so: one break often is all it takes — and all you can get — to win these tight matches. The elementary tactic is to hit a hard serve that the receiver will not be able to get past two hunks at the net, the one positioned there already and the server who follows his shot forward.
What that means is close coordination: Your partner intuitively grasps what you are doing and puts himself into position to back you up, if needed. You move in geometric patterns determined by the dynamic of the play, prepared for where the ball will be, and in a position to put it where they — the other gang — will not be. It does not always work as planned, but if you stick to the rule, you succeed often enough to get what you want.
This is a business plan that seems to have completely escaped the downtowners who are supposed to see to the public interest. Instead of backing one another up, as they did during the administration of Calvin Coolidge, they seek to make sure their colleagues fail. This leads to acrimony and an ineffective national government, in a time of many perils, foreign and domestic.
Another factor here is that the Rock Creek Park courts are notorious for being “slow,” according to, among several others who were on them this week, Andy Murray, the top English tennis player. To the average normal, the difference between these courts and an ice rink is zilch, but to the young men and women who are so skilled that they can play for money, the courts are maybe not sand dunes but slow. Serious money, too — the male winner gets 350,000 USD; the woman gets 120,000; doubles, less.
Also, Sir Andy noted, the “balls are heavy,” meaning that apart from which manufacturer supplies the tournament, in the humid conditions of an ordinary August in Washington, the balls will get soggy and “big” (a sensation due to the molecules bouncing about inside the spheres, energized by the heat), and you cannot put all the pace on them you might want.
The heat and humidity combined manifestly affect different players differently, which figures. It affects women more than men, as a general rule. Coco Gauff, who lives in Florida, said it felt cool, but the defending champion, Liudmila Samsonova, who is from the no-name country, played with heat-induced sluggishness in the semis and lost rather badly to Miss Gauff, who went to beat Maria Sakkari — who can stand the heat, being from Greece, but not the Coco power.
Spectators were given fans, which they used like the señoras at a corrida in Spain during the pases and verónicas. At least two spectators required interventions by medical personnel, who poured cold water on their heads and carried them out of the stadium. This was a humane act. Earlier in the week, a number of individuals suffering from apocalyptic delusions interrupted a match by throwing oversized souvenir balls on the court and unfurling banners with references to an unspecified climate disaster.
This was a stupid act, or at least an incoherent one, since the only possible reason for it — though no one specifically said so — was that the naming sponsors, Mubadala and Citi, are major actors in finance and investment. It is a fair guess that some of their work involves the energy sector (Mubadala is an investment arm of the sovereign fund of the United Arab Emirates, a noted oil producer). The UAE, which Gen. Jim Mattis refers to as “little Sparta,” is also a participant in the Abraham Accords, whereby Arab states and Israel are exchanging diplomatic missions and burying old hatchets.
There used to be people in Washington — including the original founders of the Washington Tennis & Education Foundation, the beneficiary of the tournament — who appreciated the humidity because it meant that most of the people who worked or claimed to work down there where the 16th Street busses end up went home to Texas and Ohio and other normal regions. Due to advances in technology, these administrative statists can always maintain cool temperatures. Your taxes pay for the installation of said technology downtown, and then you also have to consider what they do there, which is invent new reasons to meddle in your affairs.
The Americans kept the Argentines on the alert with their big serves, but you could tell that they were playing, you might say, each one his game. And very good games they are, for sure: Ben Shelton’s athleticism and power — he is big fellow, could be a first baseman — always ups the pressure, and Mackenzie McDonald’s superb placement makes for passing shots that no one, even when there are two of them, can reach.
By contrast, the hombres de las pampas — they hail from Buenos Aires and Tandil — were in tandem. They are older, late 30s, and they have played many, many matches together. Basically, they are what Lloyd Glasspool and Harri Heliövaara did when they played Ben and Mac a couple days before and, mysteries of sport, made mistakes at the worst possible moments and let themselves get beat. But these Argies stayed steady.
They were where they were supposed to be, and they put their shots where they could flummox the younger men. The points came when needed.
Which is not to take anything away from Ben and Mac. They made some great shots, but you did not get the sense that they were making great plays consistently. The Americans took the first set in a tight tiebreak. But by then the other side had them figured out, and they had their own operating systems all warmed up. They took the second set by a decisive score of 6–2 and went into the 10-point third-set tiebreak with confidence. It was not misplaced. Shelton was not in his zone, made wild shots, doubled on match point. Learning experience.
There was a time when the downtowners thought a great deal about sports, took a real interest in them. The tournament is only a few minutes from where they work, but if any of them were at the stadium to see and enjoy and learn, they did it undercover.
Anyway, young Coco Gauff took the women’s trophy, and a hard-hitting Dutchman named Tallon Griekspoor, who upset the No. 1 seed Taylor Fritz yesterday, was battling Murray’s compatriot, Dan Evans, for the men’s when the weather got inclement. The results will be known later. Or tomorrow.
It was a fine tournament that sold out all week; unlike Washington’s principal industry, it delivers what it sets out to do.
*****
UPDATE: Dan “Evo” Evans played one of the great matches of his career and took that final when the match resumed late into the night. He placed soft-hands drops and killer down-the-line passes. He had the Dutch boy — no hard feelings — on a yo-yo. Nice for the Muba folks, too, since Evans, who is a working-class lad from Birmingham, has a home in Dubai. Back in the day, it took a mere battalion of Lancashire Guards to keep order there; nowadays, even as the Emiratis put their money is safe places like U.S. sports, our sailors and Marines keep them — and us — safe, on guard in dangerous waters.
READ MORE from Roger Kaplan:
Incredible Skill and Good Humor: Doubles at the DC Open
Read More: Public Servants Should Emulate Men in Doubles – The American Spectator