She didn’t win a single game.
China’s Wang Xinyu had to believe she had at least a chance of beating women’s singles champion and top seed Iga Swiatek in the third round of the French Open on Saturday. After all, Wang is not stupid. She’s a hard-working 21-year-old who achieved her career-high ranking of world No. 59 in April, and she has what it takes to compete with top-level players.
But she lost and it was 6-0, 6-0, a scary double bagel in tennis terms. The match was no longer than a warm-up.
I say there is glory in those imperfections.
Long live you weak one. Weary and weary people, strugglers and losers. Athletes who suffer miserable losses in public.
Long live the losers in sports.
We’ve seen a lot over the past week and we’ll be seeing a lot more soon.
Of course, this doesn’t just happen on the slippery clay of the French Open.
The NBA and NHL playoffs have finally reached the finals. College softball, quickly gaining popularity, is in the mix with the NCAA Division I Championships. The Oklahoma Sooners are looking for their third straight win and aim to add to their Division I record 51-game winning streak after defeating Stanford in overtime in the semifinals on Monday. Let’s have some sympathy for the Sooners’ cavalcade of victims.
Most stories focus on the winners of these championships. It’s natural. The world’s best athletes stretch and bend the limits of human potential. The best of the best even seem to have control over time. No wonder we watch them perform with a sense of awe that feels existential. They have become god-like in our world.
That’s okay and understandable, but think of a tennis player struggling with all his might to win even a single match at a Grand Slam match. Think of a basketball star making a crucial free throw or a hockey goalie slipping and whizzing past a winning slap shot.
Give me nerves that would wither under pressure. I’m here for reflexes like never before.
why? Well, the winner will always get his due. But as we all know, mistakes are human. Totally and beautifully. And people who lose in so many different ways are a more relatable part of big sports.
It’s comforting to know that highly conditioned, supremely coordinated, and battle-tested athletes can tire, cramp, give in to pressure, struggle to get enough air, and suffer painful defeats. . In the process of failing, they become more like the rest of us idiots, if only for a moment.
So we can take solace in the Boston Bruins, who won a record 65 games in the regular season but promptly lost to the Florida Panthers in the first round of the NHL playoffs. High expectations for the Stanley Cup have grown. Who can relate? I know I can do it.
Speaking of Boston, in the NBA playoffs, the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum came back from a 3-0 hole to tie the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. Then, in a history-making come-from-behind win in Game 7, they collectively stink bombed, putting together the worst and weakest performance of their careers.
Have you ever been on the verge of something great happening, only to fail publicly and suffer a major failure? Yes, when I was in a 5th grade play, I forgot my lines and fell on stage and almost broke my nose. It wasn’t hard to empathize with Brown and Tatum as they continued to make shots. Miami won by 19 points with millions of people watching.
Where there is no sure footing, no bounce to be expected and every match can turn into a grueling marathon, the red clay of Roland Garros offers a clear window into the sport’s shocking truth.
Players walk onto the court with their skin tanned and neatly dressed like Parisian runway models. Then, as the game progresses, reality sets in.
In other Grand Slam tennis tournaments, points often run out quickly. On Roland Garros clay, points can stretch like a John Coltrane solo. They can continue to apply pressure and build the tempo to a crescendo.
The longest and most competitive matches often see both physical and mental toll on athletes. Uncertainty seeps in and emaciated with it. Muscles become weak and tremble. The neat outfits – shoes, socks, shirts, wristbands, headbands and hats – are cakes made from sweat and lumps of clay.
The king has not been in court long enough to suffer this kind of suffering against Swiatek. But France’s Gaël Monfils did. Monfils, a seasoned 36-year-old veteran playing perhaps his last Grand Slam in front of a home crowd, won his first-round match despite being down 4-0 in the fifth set. Along the way, he struggled to overcome aching lungs and a torrent of leg cramps. He completed the match but was too tired and sore to take the court for his second round match two days later.
The march of time waits for no one.
A few days later, a much younger player, Italy’s Jannik Sinner, 21, seeded 8th and fast-rising, took on No. 79 journeyman Daniel Altmaier on the court of Suzanne Lenglen.
The sinner should have won without much difficulty.
He got ahead early but struggled. He said an hour had passed. Altmaier caught up. Another hour passed. The game reached a stalemate. 3 hours turned into 4 hours. Sinner had two match points and coughed them both up. They headed to the fifth set. Sinner fell behind and came back. He faced four match points but won them all.
And… and five hours and 26 minutes later, Sinner watched as a screaming serve flew past his outstretched racket for an ace. game. set. matches. Final scores: 6-7(0), 7-6(7), 1-6, 7-6(4), 7-5. The upset was the fifth longest match in French Open history.
Sinner left the court looking dirty and scuffled, his face showing the self-doubt that often characterizes losers. That said, he was a beautiful human being.
