Post Grand Slam Tournament Fatigue

It’s been a week since Roland Garros ended and while some of us use the 2026 World Cup as a useless band-aid (wet and not sticking) others are staring into the emptiness of time when returning home from work. No more 6-hour matches, no more clay-stained socks, no more chaos. All we have left is the soundless eeriness of lawn tennis and Serena’s comeback (thank God for that).

I usually write a Monday summary of the women’s and men’s finals after a Grand Slam tournament but a nasty virus had me in its grips that made it hard to swallow and function, let alone write. Ever since I’ve started this newsletter many more writers have joined the tennis space and I’m thankful for each and every one of them. Every single one covers the sport from a different angle and with a distinct set of eyes and ears, and having them around has somewhat alleviated the pressure on my side of having to write classic reports and I can bathe in fever sweats and self-pity with one fewer thing to worry about. It also allows me to focus on other aspects of the game that are more interesting to me than results.

I have always felt more strongly about losses in tennis than wins. Wins smooth everything over, they are easy, straightforward and undebatable. Losing, however, is complicated. Losing is effectively more human than winning. Historians always talk about how history is written by the winners of wars. The same thing is true in sports. Winners immediately become the main character, winning shapes the narrative. And most of the times in sports, that’s just fine. On some occasions, though, when players win who come with loads of talent but also with a complicated past like Alexander Zverev, things become fickle, slippery and headache-inducing.

All of a sudden, the question we once thought belonged in art “can you separate art from artist?” stretches its slimy, drippy fingers into tennis. Winning a major tournament is an incredible feat. To perform at the highest level of one’s craft for seven matches and two weeks, against the best in the world, yes, but above all against your own doubts, weaknesses and a capricious body is an accomplishment in sport like few others. To do it with diabetes and haunting ghosts of having been there before and failed is doubly astonishing. And yet, the question remains for many: Who is the player we see on the court as a human being off the court? Does it matter for what they do in tennis? Should it matter?

Respect may be torn from one’s dead, cold hands but thankfully, it’s an individual choice whom you give your love to. Do you root for the tennis player on court or the human being off court or is it a combination of the two that tips your love? We probably all fall somewhere in the combination category.

The only problem I see with that is that we don’t actually, truly, profoundly know these players as human beings. We know of them. We see them in silly videos that are edited for clicks, we see how they present themselves on court, we see how they react in interviews and we get a glimpse of their personality in trophy ceremonies. From all these pieces of information we form an image of a character, we create an idea of a person. But we don’t actually know. Our hearts fly out to some and remain cold as Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense towards others.

But I truly believe that that precisely is the beauty and strength of tennis. It’s an individual sport. It’s a global sport. You can attach your fan love to whomever you choose. Bound by nothing but personal sympathy and the idea you have of certain athletes.

I always try to view tennis players as tennis players first, constantly reminding myself that even though I know them slightly better than most people do, I still know nothing about them. No matter how hard I try to be neutral and check myself regularly, my heart goes out to some and remains as cold as Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense when confronted with others. I hide it well (or so I think) but between the lines lies always sympathy (at least so I hope) for a tennis player confronting themselves and their fears when playing a tennis match.

Things that make me happy

The Knicks are up 3:1 in the NBA finals. As a New Yorker by choice, the apartment I moved into four years ago came with a cockroach, loneliness and the most agonising of all trifectas in sports fandom: Giants, Mets and Knicks. Have all the years of heartbreak, empty stares at bar TV screens and sports radio yelling finally come to an end? We shall see.

Things that make me unhappy

I’ve been reading a book that became very popular among some of the cool people who read books and post about them online. I don’t want to name it because I respect writers and their work, no matter what, but the book is bad. It made me doubt these people who I respected before. We play padel tennis and pickle ball because regular tennis is too hard and we read books full of stereotypes and tout it as literature. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer that people read trash than not read at all and I prefer that people move rather than not move at all. But desperately making things easier and stubbornly de-intellectualising everything we read has not exactly moved us forward lately.

On to lawn tennis! May it be quietly disturbing and exhilarating - just like our modern times.

Yours truly, Andrea