Seeing Tennis Reflected in the Ice and Snow
At the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, hockey, figure skating, curling, skiing and more all reflected back onto my tennis-trained eye.
It has been a fairly fascinating February week of tennis, for those paying attention.
Concerns over the demands of the tour calendar reached an apparent crisis point at WTA 1000 Dubai, where a staggering 25 of the 43 players who were originally entered in the main draw—58.1 percent—either withdrew or retired from matches. That included the top two seeds, No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 2 Iga Swiatek, who both withdrew before the draw was made, incensing tournament director Salah Tahlak.
“I think there should be a harsher punishment on the players [for withdrawing],” Tahlak told Reem Abulleil of The National. “Not just fines—they should be docked ranking points.”
According to Abulleil, Tahlak further told the Arabic-language newspaper Al Bayan that last-minute withdrawals should incur penalties of 500 or 1000 points—a downright draconian amount that will almost certainly never be implemented.
At least one of Tahlak’s star attractions shone as hoped: Alex Eala, upon whom the tournament had heavily relied to sell tickets to Dubai’s massive Filipino diaspora, packed the stadium over and over during her run to the quarterfinals.
And despite the absences, there wound up being a star-studded semifinal slate: Jessica Pegula scored a fifth straight win over Amanda Anisimova, and Elina Svitolina won a mind-warping 6-4, 6-7(13!), 6-4 semifinal over Coco Gauff, whose forehand was breaking down brutally in the final stages. Pegula beat Svitolina in the final a day later for the fourth WTA 1000 title of her underrated career.
It has been an interesting week on the men’s side, too: at ATP 500 Doha, Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Daniil Medvedev (in a damningly empty stadium), and Carlos Alcaraz beat the returning Arthur Fils in the final.
At ATP 500 Rio de Janeiro, João Lucas Reis da Silva made more history as the first openly gay man to play an ATP main draw match, a nice moment that didn’t quite make up for an anemic, almost anonymous field for this level. It didn’t help Rio’s optics that the draw at the simultaneous ATP 250 Delray Beach was stronger than it has been in years, with eight top-30 players.
But most of my attention, I will readily admit, has been away from tennis and instead fixed on the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games, which are wrapping up their fortnight as I write this.
Something about the pure white backdrops of snow and ice cast things into especially stark relief, and I’ve been reflecting on how what’s happening in Northern Italy reflects on the world of tennis. So with all these Olympic thoughts ringing1 through my head—and this being the first Olympics to occur during Bounces’ existence—I thought I’d share them with folks here, as a sort of tennis comparative literature exercise.
This is another notebook-style column, with over 4,300 words to ponder on a big range of topics:
Inevitable duopolies, in men’s tennis and women’s hockey.
When big hockey heroes maintain a frozen-solid silence.
Alysa Liu, the Ash Barty of the Ice.
Ilia Malinin as circa 1999 Venus Williams.
Rights issues continue. It figures.
Mixed doubles leads off, in curling and in tennis.
Taking tennis truly team-ward.
Grassy, Grassy, Grassy? Naur, Naur, Naur.
The most Federeresque sport of the Winter Olympics.
There’s no podium like home.
The drones we’re looking for, perhaps in tennis?
True cinema from 70 years ago.
The Nor-Way, Mary Carillo, and how to count medals.
Seeing red flags: why people are very weird about Eileen Gu.
Rushing head first into cowardice: the IOC.
Rushing head first into bravery: Lindsey Vonn.
To read all of this and more, please do subscribe to Bounces! -Ben
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Bounces to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.