Try not to care
Posted on 07/06/2010With the World Cup upon us, and Wimbledon fast approaching, we have a feast of sport in the coming weeks, but Simon Barnes in The Times reminds us that defeat is only just around the corner.
Let us take a breath. For we are just about to launch ourselves into a frenzied few weeks that will encompass one of the deepest and most important experiences in sport. Losing.On Saturday, the England football team will be setting off on their World Cup via dolorosa that traditionally ends with the penalty shoot-out. Ever since the triumphant qualification period ended, England’s hopes have been on the slide, and we have reached a comfortable level of inspissated gloom mixed with half a shot of insane optimism.
And a fortnight today, Andy Murray begins his latest assault on Wimbledon, and since he reached the final of the Australian Open, he, too, has been in a bit of a slump. Put it this way: he is not the one player everyone will be desperate to avoid. The likelihood is that England and Scotland will both get knocked out, perhaps on the same day, to unite us all in sporting grief.
The logical thing, then, is not to care. Not to build up any unrealistic notions of what might happen. To set up every possible guard against disappointment, leaving just a small window so that one might be pleasantly, if mildly, surprised if there is a success.
But nobody who cares about sport will be doing any such thing. We can do the gloom and the pessimism now, but as soon as the first goal is scored, the first set is won, we will chuck all that good sense out of the window. That treacherous seed of optimism will germinate: soon it will be a pestilential weed, flourishing like a jungle vine, threatening to take over the world.We all love winning . . . so much so that we forget that the second-most exciting experience in sport is losing. And that is what we seek: excitement, the deep emotional involvement in the compelling narrative of a great sporting tournament. It is the involvement we crave, not the victory; the journey, not the destination. It is the intensity of the experience that compels us time and again, when we really should — we really do — know better.
The experience is the more vivid because it is shared. Most of the communities in which we operate will be affected, in some form, by the gathering intensity of the story. Those who don’t like sport will complain that sport has become unavoidable . . . and many will find themselves, almost despite themselves, watching that agony of the rain-affected semi-final, or the quarter-final that passes, with dreadful inevitability, towards its destiny with the penalty spot.
Winning is not the only thing in sport. It is not even the reason for sport. We get involved in sport for the joy of losing, a far more common experience. Half the 256 singles players at Wimbledon go out in the first round: half the 32 World Cup teams go home after the group stage. Each grand-slam singles draw has 127 losers; the World Cup finals will have 31 losing teams. If losing wasn’t the point of sport, no one would watch it.
And here’s another great thing about losing. What if we didn’t?
Superman on collision course
Meanwhile, Greg Rusedski in The Mirror believes Rafael Nadal is playing the best tennis of his life.
Rafa Nadal played like Superman to win his fifth French Open title yesterday.And the Spaniard will now arrive in London flying high at the top of the world rankings to set up a great grasscourt season starting at the AEGON Championships today.
Nadal's straight-sets victory over Robin Soderling was the best I have ever seen him play. He was simply sensational.
The 24-year-old was like a human wall in defence and deadly in attack.
Nadal was superb when he won the French Open, then Queen's and Wimbledon in 2008. But now I think the new world No.1 is even better.
His serve is stronger, his backhand has improved and he is fresher now he is more selective over his schedule. No man has ever won all three claycourt Masters and the French Open in the same year and he will start at Queen's Club on Wednesday full of confidence. Roger Federer will have to wait a little longer to break Pete Sampras's record of 286 weeks at world No.1.
He came up against a red-hot Soderling in the quarter-finals in Paris but he will be back. And he will be super-motivated when he arrives in Wimbledon looking for his seventh Championship.
But form and history suggests Federer and Nadal are again on Wimbledon collision course after the Spaniard missed the grasscourt season last year with knee problems. If Nadal were to win at Queen's Club again this weekend, I think we could be looking forward to another five-set epic in the final on July 4.