Negative Dialectics, or, Something is Missing in Professional Tennis
Outworkings and Working Out - Episode 2
Jannick Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are incredible athletes. This is clear in how they’ve separated themselves from the rest of the field of professional tennis players.
One of the most difficult-to-comprehend statistics about professional tennis is time between shots, which on the Tour comes out to an average of 1.2 seconds. This means that each player on the court is hitting the ball every 2.4 seconds. The ATP has published a few statistics for the Tour average forehand speed and backhand speed: 121kph and 108kph respectively. From this, we can come up with the speeds of 33.6 meters per second for the forehand and 30.0 meters per second for the backhand. Considering a tennis court is 23.77 meters long, and taking into consideration the arcing nature of tennis shots, the angle they are hit at, and the distance players stand behind the baseline, a bit over a second in between shots seems to make sense. For some context into the difficult of this act, watch a clock, and imagine hitting a ball every time a hand shifts two seconds forward.
Alcaraz and Sinner hit the ball around 8kph faster than the tour average, but are outdone slightly by Dimitrov and Rublev on the forehand and Zverev on the backhand wing. Nonetheless, they still consistently rank in the top five on each side. In terms of RPM, or rotations per minute, Ruud and Dimitrov out-spin them as well off both wings. This leaves us with a bit of dilemma. Sinner is 5 and 1 against Dimitrov, 7 and 3 against Rublev, and 4 and 0 against Ruud. Alcaraz is 4 and 2 against Dimitrov, 4 and 1 against Rublev, and 5 and 1 against Ruud. The “Big Two” have won 8 out of the last 8 Grand Slams, and 9 out of the last 10, only being interrupted by Novak Djokovic in Flushing Meadows in 2023. How is this possible?
The conclusion many are in the midst of drawing is that it is their athleticism, movement, and point construction that allow them to hit a level that no one else seems to be able to match. In simple terms, this means they are able to get in hitting position faster, get into better hitting positions, and hit higher quality balls into more-difficult-to-retrieve locations from any spot on the court. They are obviously lightning fast, but maybe not as fast in a 10m or 40m dash than players like Alex DeMinaur or Tommy Paul, who seem to be a half-step ahead of the rest of the tour on defense. Nonetheless, nobody matches them in shot creation ability whilst on the move, as watching any highlight video of the two from the last two years will tell you. This was a common theme among the peak Nadal years as well, an unrivalled ability to hit passing shots or turn defense into offense from impossible positions. It was also a theme among the top u18 junior players in Southern California while I was growing up. Almost without exception, the best players were the best movers, and moreover the best at coming up with shots while disadvantaged.
However. We’ve lost something from the game. I’m not talking about Rafa’s fighting spirit, or Roger’s grace. It is much simpler and less abstract, and is contained within the figure of the third of the big Three. It is hatred, the kind that Novak Djokovic inspired in Federer in the early years, the kind that he had for some US Open crowds, the kind that the gerontocrats had for him when he didn’t want to take a vaccine. He is not friends with the other two, despite their own bromance. Rafa has avoided him after retirement; Roger treats him the way you treat a wolf that you’ve been assured is not wild anymore.
He is still around for Alcaraz and Sinner, but a 38-year-old cannot hate a 22-year-old, and they can’t hate him. He is so clearly the third best player in the world, and contains within himself so much more substance than the other two currently hold within their wiry frames. He has obviously been on a kind of holy warpath right now, not against other humans but against time itself, seeing if he can reverse not only the slowly declining quality of his returns but also the strains and sorenesses that seem understandable for a man approaching his 40s. And he has no time for the other two. They only represent the new human horizon that he is attempting to supersede. The other two don’t have a comparable thing inside them which compel them back onto the court.
Alcaraz is beautiful, all tan and all muscle and all instinct and clearly enjoying his physical supremacy. He is a genius of variation, knowing he will be intense and more wily than anyone he comes up against, and therefore knowing he doesn’t need to think very much. His smile is pure, and authentic in its naivete.
Sinner holds a working-class quietness and dignity within himself, a love for his family and awkwardness with verbal expression that the bourgeoisie would have mocked and taken as a sign of his intellectual inferiority two centuries ago. He is a good Zoomer: he likes video games, and activism, and is a loving acolyte of his coach, Darren Cahill. And he is handsome as well, and a Gucci model now. Here in China, with the rise of tennis among urbanite youth, the two have become heart throbs in a way that foreign athletes of other sports cannot replicate.
Who else were heart throbs? Look at these pictures of young Roger and young Rafa.
Think about the endorsements they took. Think about the way they engaged with fashion, about how they redefined male beauty for the sportsman; the crystal class of the Swiss Alps, the unkempt, sun-scorched quality of Mallorca. Novak never fit into their model. He never could partake in the eroticism of their friendship, or of their public image. He has always been their counterpoint, a figure of contradiction and controversy, never accepted by the public or his peers. And this generated a heat within the tour that is gone. I cannot listen to one more acceptance speech by whichever of the two, Alcaraz or Sinner, wins the next Slam, about how handsome his opponent was, about how he pushes him to be not only a better player but a better man, how their friendship off the court is as genuine as their rivalry on the court, about how they like the other’s haircut. I will throw up. Rather than contrivance, sports needs villainry, it needs rage, its needs hatred, it needs irrationality. It is the only place where these parts of our social experience can be expressed, and absorbed without disgust by spectators. Its why Lebron, despite achieving so much more than Michael, will never take his place in the history books, with his whining and his Twitch appearances and his stupid new brand collaborations.
It was always this darkness that drew me to Novak as a teenager. Embattled, rebellious, fucking with his opponents rhythm in the most cynical, in-your-face nastiness. A middle-finger, a fuck-you, followed up with an unparalleled, honey-tongued eloquence and a supernatural ability to be better than everyone else without ever appearing to be a better tennis player. This was a true, mythical darkness, a closeness with something more powerful, more complex, than the human mind could handle. It was a negation of the world of the other two, their contrived dialectical opposition, blue and red eclipsed by black. It came complete with all the bullshit about crystals and ancient giants. The more Djokovic won, the more likely it seemed that there actually was something the rest of us didn’t understand, and to be honest, wouldn’t it be fucking sick if it was giants and enormously powerful burial mounds somewhere in Europe.
I retain a hope that this hatred will slowly bubble up from somewhere in the next few years. Maybe not within the figures of our inane Big Two. Maybe it will have to come some Oedipal drama in the Ben Shelton camp, a divorce between father and son who seem to be far too close for comfort. Maybe it will come from Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, utilizing his 6’8” height and his bad looks to prove that technique, control, or prettiness are no longer necessary in tennis. Maybe the other two will grow up, develop something nasty within themselves that the rest of us can savor. Whatever happens, just remember, Alcaraz’s “happiness,” Sinner’s “sincerity,” these are not serious traits, they do not make up serious, transcendent figures of physical mastery. In the words of Logan Roy, they are not serious people.