Last Word: Frustration as careers wind down
Last Word: Frustration as careers wind down
To understand that love and hate are on the same continuum, you do not have to read about spouses killing each other or lovers destroying themselves.Hatred isn’t the opposite of love, it’s justa variation of it. They both mean you have passionate feelings.I don’t know who said that but you can see exampleson the sports field.
As 37-year-old Novak Djokovic’s career winds down, he has been struggling on practice courts, not just matches. He split from his coach Andy Murray. A video of Djokovic cursing his sport in Madrid (in Serbian) went viral. AsMurray handed him the tennis balls, Djokovic reacted with “F*** sport, f*** tennis, f*** everything else.” To curse what you love most is not unusual — frustration and an awareness of approaching mortality will do it.
Most top players begin as passionate lovers of the sport they excel at. As a boy Sachin Tendulkar slept with a cricket bat beside him, Maradona with a football under his arm when he was three. Even the casual weekend player will have stories of when he was first given a racquet or a ball or a bat and how he worshipped it. Not all of them grow up to become international stars.
“I hate the sight of tennis balls,” Jimmy Connors once said, partly as a joke, “and that’s why I try to hit the hell out of them.”
Djokovic started playing tennis at four when his father gifted him a mini racquet. A pink one, as investigative journalists discovered years later. In the war years in Serbia, as the NATO bombs fell around him, Djokovic found places to practice, including a disused swimming pool.
In the introduction to his autobiography, he explains how the odds were heavily stacked against him. “A boy like me, growing up in Serbia, becoming a tennis champion? It was unlikely in even the best of circumstances. And it became ever more unlikely when the bombs started dropping,” he wrote.Still, when he was seven, Djokovic told his interviewer on Serbian TV, “The goal for me is to become the world No. 1.”
This has been a season of goodbyes — actually, most seasons are, but this involves some personal heroes and friends. Most careers beyond 35 in sport are probably bonus runs. Rohit Sharma is gone, as is Virat Kohli, from the format he loves most. Simona Halep, Tyson Fury have also quit their sports while question marks hang over the likes of Tiger Woods, Venus Williams and M. S. Dhoni.
Generational changes are taking place in sports all the time, and that period of uncertainty as the old order changes and the new hasn’t fully established itself is part of the excitement too. Will Jannik Sinner finish with as many Grand Slam titles as Djokovic, who has 24? Will Shubman Gill be a like-for-like replacement for Kohli?
It is easy to understand Djokovic’s exasperation. Most careers end in frustration, with top athletes cursing themselves for hanging on that bit too long!
