Yesterday
I witnessed one of the most severe one-sided matches that, surprisingly, also
happened to be beautiful and exciting.
First
I give below the background to this post.
Only
a few days ago, in response to an egregiously badly argued article by Amit Karmakar [1], I wrote [2]:
I
have watched many one-sided tennis matches (Becker and Edberg at Wimbledon 1989
that Becker won, as one stand-out example) and one most enjoyable lopsided
match – McEnroe v. Connors, 1984 Wimbledon.
The
offending statement by Karmakar read:
“…the next match would have been either one-sided or boring [my
emphasis].”
Had
that “or” been written as a logic operand .OR. I would have said OK. But
Karmakar did not and he incurred my wrath. In ordinary English, “or” means a
simple this or that. Orient or Occident, not even accidental meeting between
the two. On the other hand, .OR. means the two can mix.
But
the logic operand complementary to .OR. is .AND. and that is what I wish to
focus on here.
Who
would’ve thought – and I definitely did not – that I would get to hear a
reprise, almost, of the McEnroe v. Connors encounter at Wimbledon what seems to
be eons ago, 1984 to be precise, in the current French Open.
The
semifinal match between David Ferrer and Rafael Nadal. It was about as
one-sided as one can get even when the other side is staring at you across the
net. And, it was .NOT. boring (.NOT.
is another logical operand that negates what follows).
Nadal
won 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 (for the uninitiated, McEnroe beat Connors by 6-1, 6-1, 6-2).
Perhaps for two games, of the first set, Ferrer was standing. Then he started
leaning backwards and could never set himself straight. Finally he could do
nothing but tip over and take a tumble. It was a most enjoyable match, just
looking at the neurosurgeon doing his stuff rather nonchalantly. I have nothing
against Ferrer and the result would have been the same no matter who was on
the other side. The domination was so complete. It was BRILLIANCE against
brilliance. And, it was exciting.
And
for that reason, this match was one-sided.AND.exciting.
Following
this was a semi anti-thesis of the title of this post, the match between Roger
Federer and Novak Djokovic. In terms of a logical operand, I may want to call
it one-sided.AND.boring.
The
score line reads Djokovic beat Federer 6-4, 7-5, 6-3. “That is not a lopsided
match, just one service break in each set,” I hear you thinking. I would have tended to agree with you had I not
seen the match and had I not known what Federer had done in the past. Here, I
saw the match and have seen what and how the FedEx of yesterday would have
delivered. And, this did not happen.
For
Pete’s sake, Federer was leading 5-4 and serving for the second set, after
having lost the first one listlessly. If the first was listless, the second set
was ugly, did nothing good to the reputation of the warriors. OK, serve is not
as big a weapon at the French Open compared to at Wimbledon; even so, losing serve
seven times, in a set of 12 games? They were playing ugly. The third set resembled
the long walk of the condemned to the gallows. True, there were some great
shots and efforts, but overall …
Anyways,
Djokovic won. But, the match is not anything even the winner would want to
watch on TV, iPad or whatever. Here the .AND. operand comes in handy. The match
was one-sided.AND.boring.
For
a one-sided match to be exciting, one needs to concentrate on why the match is
one-sided. The casual watcher would be left clueless. One combatant is in the clichéd “zone” and the other, as well as he
might be playing just cannot make inroads into that “zone”. That is how good
the opponent was. Just as Ferrer said, you just count your loss and walk away,
head held high.
No,
the above does not mean Federer must hang his head in shame. But he definitely
could have played better but did not. That must worry him, if he is counting on
adding to his titles at the majors. The path would look to run through Djokovic
and Nadal for some years to come. In my opinion, Djokovic was not in the “zone”
in the match, yet he beat Federer. A sobering thought for the latter.
The
badly argued article cited at the beginning
did not recognize the difference between the good and the not-so-good one-sided
matches. For Amit Karmakar who criticized Anand’s victory at the world
championships, that is a big mill stone around his journalistic neck.
References
1.
Anand
slowly losing grip over undisputed world title, Amit Karmakar, May 31, 2012 (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Tie-Breaker/entry/anand-slowly-losing-grip-over-undisputed-world-title)
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