To paraphrase Allen Ginsberg, “I saw the best tennis players of my generation destroyed by aging, sweaty and hobbled in dirt-streaked kits.” It happened again today in Paris as Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka, two of the ATP’s last great geezers still standing (if only barely) in their late thirties, met in the first round of Roland-Garros. It was a bittersweet occasion, as so many once-routine encounters become with the passage of time — and one that unfolded as it usually does when they rendezvous on clay, with the Swiss advancing to round two.
Maybe they’ll meet again on grass in the coming weeks, a surface on which Murray outclasses Wawrinka. Two of the only contenders to break through at majors during the Big Three’s interminable reign of terror (three times apiece, no less), they’ve had rough goes of it in recent years with nagging injuries followed by rehabilitations that didn’t always go as planned. As fans we mature with the top players of our generation and I’ll always remember fondly the early years of Murray’s relationship with Kim Sears, when she supposedly tired of his zeal for video games and gave him the heave-ho.
British tabloid photographers followed them around supermarket parking lots during the periods before their breakup and after their reconciliation; I recall Sears looking the part of a responsible grownup while Murray tagged along holding checkout counter candy like a child.* They’ve since married and had at least four kids but one can still easily imagine him slipping a Snickers onto the conveyor, possibly while dressed as a dragon.
As for Wawrinka, I’ve previously described what his 2014 Australian Open championship meant to me and won’t repeat it here. There is beauty in his and Murray’s devotion to their sport and in their willingness to humble themselves at Challenger events in pursuit of comebacks that are, at this late juncture, more about passion and principle than pride. We should enjoy every moment we have left with them and fellow fogey Richard Gasquet, who ousted Borna Coric today, while we can.
Speaking of wizened old prunes resistant to throwing in the towel, you’ve probably noticed my marriage endures. Is it any better now than it was six months ago? It’s hard to qualify that. Let’s turn to Crankenstein — I’ll extend a microphone like Howard Cosell — and see what she thinks.
“Would it be bad for my marriage if I said I don’t know who Howard Cosell is?” she asked, followed by a tentative “I think our marriage is better? One thing I will say, I think ‘Niles’ is better, which, independent of anything else in the world, makes our marriage better. You don’t want to be in a throuple with ‘Niles.’ What do you think?”
Well, for starters I think Crankenstein should watch Bananas. I quote it frequently and she’s sometimes vaguely confused in response, but Cosell’s cameo is a funnier introduction to him than anything you’ll get from Google.** Second, yes, ‘Niles’ has been less destructive than in the past, and I think we’re also in a better place with a lot of the non-motor Parkinson’s stuff than we were pre-levodopa and antidepressants. None of it changes our core problems but it makes day-to-day life much easier.
Enough’s happened lately with her depression, my health, and some challenges facing our closest relatives that there’s currently nothing to gain by having the same emotionally draining conversations for the umpteenth time; we already know each other’s feelings and what we can (and cannot) give each other. Ultimately marriage is no different than what Murray and Wawrinka demonstrated a few hours ago on Philippe Chatrier: sometimes whether you win the match means less than whether you try.
* During that era I lived with a Daily Mail enthusiast and every now and then I wonder whether Liz Jones and Petronella Wyatt are still up to their old antics and if Minty Peterson is still on EastEnders. But I’ve never been completely convinced that Jones and Wyatt columns weren’t churned out by inebriated baboons operating proto-AI bots of some sort, in which case fresh content might still appear under their bylines a hundred years after the rest of us die, powered by an automated process.
** “I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham” and “I move for a mistrial! Do you realize there’s not a single homosexual on that jury?” are what she hears most often.