Djokovic and the Demise of the Beautiful Game
Sports need compelling stories to thrive. Tennis, the most queer-friendly among major sports, is losing the stories and eclectic set of personalities that made it compelling.
“The ambition should always be to play an elegant game.”
- Pelé
The Brazilian soccer star, Pelé, is said to have popularized the phrase “the beautiful game” for his sport. I grew up on a steady diet of football (as we call it in India) and tennis. For me, tennis was the beautiful game.
Tennis in the 1990s and early 2000s was about personalities, signaling a generational shift. The great Pete Sampras, who dominated the grass courts in the previous decade, was beaten at Wimbledon by a classy Swiss with a killer forehand. Andre Agassi and Goran Ivanisevic had finally conquered their demons. Serve and volley did not seem as invincible, especially on grass, as they used to. On clay, the Spaniards and Latin Americans had taken over from the Nordic greats of the 1980s.
On the women’s side, the great rivalry of Steffi Graff and Monica Seles (and, for a bit, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario) was over. Graff, the queen of understated tennis, had won. Martina Hingis had her ephemeral moment of beauty before the Williams sisters muscled her to early retirement. The power game had arrived. Women’s tennis changed forever.
I love tennis. I love everything about it. I love singles, doubles, and mixed doubles matches — the differences between the three types of matches. The changes in strategy and skill needed for each. The court rules that change the nature of what’s possible. The shifts in geometry as the skills of players and the surfaces change. At its best, tennis is the most sublime conversation between two or more proficient practitioners, like poetry in live-action.
“Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility.”
- Billie Jean King
I am not much of a sports fan, in general. I am bothered by the pageantry of sports, its testosterone-fuelled intensity, the snarkiness and bigotry it produces, the sexism in promoting gendered tournaments, and the weird ways in which regional/national/local pride is affixed to sports teams. I find most sports boring. Tennis and soccer are exceptions.
Understanding why I loved tennis took me a long time. As a queer person, sports aren’t my natural inclination. I like watching soccer, especially the big games (I am one of those Azzuri fans who still swear by their defensive offense, even after two consecutive missed World Cups). But tennis is my first love. It is the only sport that never bores me.
A tennis match has a beauty and narrative that speaks to my queer love of drama, individual grit and determination, and a controlled muscularity that oozes sexuality without obscenity. Its ebb and flow mirror a gladiatorial face-off of power, energy, stamina, pace, and wits. Tennis is an intelligent game. It is played mentally, in the small interstices between the ball bouncing off the court and the player selecting the shot to play.
Tennis is as much about skill sets as it is about personalities. The game has a personality. The character of the match changes depending on who’s playing, the court surface, and the crowd’s reactions. Tennis eschews jingoism (see: Wimbledon 2022) and gender disparity (women’s tennis is given equal billing, mostly) and has a certain old-world gentility. The spectator actively participates in a match, especially the big ones, when mental stamina, crowd reaction, and nerves may make all the difference (ask: Martina Hingis in the 1999 French Open final).
Tennis and queerness shares more than just a love of the poetic. By its very nature, tennis is a game of the individual underdog. My first memory of a tennis match is watching Conchita Martinez beat an aging yet wily Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon. Conchita was the underdog against the 18-time Grand Slam champion and the emotional favorite. The most sublime three-setter ensured: the crowd started slowly and then cheered on the 22-year-old neophyte as she matched one of the greatest in the game, point for point. That is the story of tennis in my mind. The story of a beautiful game and a cathartic ending.
For much of the history of the modern game, tennis was a story of specialists. The sheer variety in the style of play made for great stories. Ivan Lendl and his elusive Wimbledon. The two miraculous years when Rod Laver and Steffi Graff seemed invincible. Rafael Nadal and his mastery at Rolland Garros. Diversity, versatility, ingenuity, and endurance — that is what made tennis special. That is what attracted me to the game.
Modern tennis has changed, though. The storytelling and narrative arc are missing. It has been replaced by what I call the Jose Mourinho Effect. Gone is the beauty in the game. Today’s tennis is very different from the one I grew up and fell in love with. It is a game of physicality, born of the same clinically packaged fitness regimen, strategy-minded approach, and an unemotional workhorse ethic. It is designed to win matches but lacks love for the game.
“Look, we’re not entertaining? I don’t care; we win.”
- Jose Mourinho (2007)
Back in 2021, when Novak Djokovic refused the COVID vaccine and skipped the Australian Open, I, like many others, questioned his ‘anti-science’ stance. He made me counter-question my stance at the recent French Open semi-finals. Without a doubt, Djokovic is the fittest player of all time. A technically-proficient player, his grasp of the intricacies of the modern game and data-driven precision have made him the most successful tennis player of all time.
In the recent French Open semi-finals, he outgunned, out-muscled, and out-played Carlos Alcaraz, fifteen years his junior, who’s far more old-school in his playing style. Armed with the medical data history, computer-generated analysis of playing styles, and shot selection, Djokovic knew precisely how to beat the top player in the world. His game is medicalized, data-obsessed, and technical, without the fluidity and imperfections that make tennis beautiful. He marries his obsessive health regimen and unparallel fitness with a sterilized mental wellness, allowing him to dominate the men’s game over the last six years.
Unsurprisingly, clay is the only surface on which he seems beatable. The rusty red clay slows the ball, allowing for a bit more spin and a split-second breath to the player, allowing for a more varied shot selection and extending rallies. It is a surface that requires skill, intuition, ingenuity, and more tactical play, grinding off every point from the baseline. Weather and humidity impact the surface and don’t advantage the server. That is why, on average, aces are less on clay than on grass or hard courts. This lack of predictability is the chink in Djokovic’s iron-clad armor.
While watching the French Open semi-finals, I begrudgingly found respect for the man who needs to be 100% sure of what he is putting in his body. That attention to detail, the craze for fitness and body, and conviction in one’s outlook have made him an unbeatable machine in modern tennis. His achievements speak for themselves. Yet, I can’t help but feel a bit bored watching him play though. He lacks the fluidity, beauty, unpredictability, and a certain sense of vincibility that gives a player and a tennis match a distinct personality. It is what I love about the game.
I tried Googling “queer people and love of tennis,” the only thing that came up was lists of gay-tennis players. From the game’s titans, like Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, to brave players who risk prosecution in their home countries like Daria Kastakina, tennis seems to have more “out” players than other sports. It is, by some accounts, the most ‘gay–friendly’ sport.
I wonder if my feelings about the clinical approach to sports are anachronistic. Sports has moved on. Physical fitness levels, available training, medical advances, and sports technology development have completely changed the game of tennis. My musings and look back at a time gone by are plain old nostalgia. As a queer tennis lover, I remember a time of queer icons — Sampras, Becker, Graff, Amelie Mauresmo, Justine Henin — whose skill sets and drive seemed to define their on-court narrative. Today, that story is not there.
We are constantly told about the punishing regime that Djokovic goes through, the endurance and training of Iga Swiatek, and the constant threat of doping scandals surrounding the sport. Today’s tennis stars are very dissimilar to the ones I grew up with. I may know the names, but I’d be hard-pressed to distinguish between the bevy of Slavic/Russian female players at the top of the rankings. Similarly, the emergence of a new breed of seemingly interchangeable players, many from Northern Europe, also signals a certain standardization in the men’s game.
Gone are the prominent personalities, the volatile figures, the calm-headed players, the graceful hitters, and more who made the game beautiful. Novak Djokovic, more than anyone else, epitomizes this trend. He is the most successful player in the history of the game. Yet I don’t know a tennis fan calling him their favorite player. It’s not to his discredit.
The game has changed. Even if some of its older queer and non-queer fans still pine for the beautiful game.
