'Lucky dip': Confessions of a failed tennis fan

The tennis season is upon us, and with it comes that nagging sense of guilt when I admit that I am not really a tennis fan. I’ve tried, I really have. A few years ago, I even made the trek to Melbourne to see if it really was better live.

“Rafa (Nadal),” my wife said when I asked her who she would like to see at the Australian Open. “Why?” I asked, suspecting non-tennis related motives. She just smiled.

I searched online for tickets. I found tickets for rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, finals. I found the colour-coded seating. Best seat. Cheapest seat. Seat in the sun. Seat in the shade. But I can’t find Rafa. There is nothing to tell me when he will play on the days that I have available.

I called a cousin who attends every year. “I can’t find Rafa,” I said.

“It’s a bit of a lucky dip,” she tells me.

A lucky dip? I don’t want to pay $800 to be in a lucky dip. The last time I spent that kind of money was for a flight. But there was no uncertainty to it. I knew where I was getting on and off. I didn’t hope for Jakarta and get Djibouti.

“But,” my cousin said, “if Rafa plays on a Tuesday then he’ll play again on Thursday and the Saturday.”

Armed with this inside knowledge I fork out for tickets for centre court, night session Saturday.

(Photo by TPN/Getty Images)

It’s Saturday 7pm. We’re seated at Rod Laver Arena, the stadium where six hours earlier Rafa cleaned up his compatriot Pablo Carreno Busta, who travelled halfway around the world to pick up a loser’s cheque. We’ve missed Rafa. We’ve lost the lucky dip.

I’d spent the intervening six hours trying to make contact with Ticketmaster to see about changing my tickets for Rafa’s next match, whenever that might be. But there was no answer to either email or phone. So, we watched as Garbine Muguruza took on Elina Svitolina. 6-1, 6-2. It’s over in 67 minutes and I missed 27 of them after ducking out to the bathroom and bar.

Even if they split my ticket cost between them, they’d still be pocketing $400 an hour. As I reflect on that, the men take the court.

Daniil Medvedev. He’s Russian. Alexei Popyrin. He’s not. That’s all I know about these two. Medvedev serves and Popyrin’s return catches the net cord and drops over. The crowd gasps. They gasp in genuine surprise at an event that occurs probably another 15 times over the course of the match and every time it does, the crowd gasps in surprise.

And then a chuckle and shake of the head as the recipient of the luck holds their hand up in apology. Ha, ha…what a guy the crowd seem to say. I realise then that I am among strangers.

They clap strangely after each and every point, even the double faults. Not a hearty clap or a rhythmic clap found in other sports stadiums. But a polite, encouraging clap, hands held in front of their face, directing the clap to their favourite player, often accompanied by an encouraging nod. They think they’re involved. Then I see that they are merely mimicking the players’ coaches who are seated court-side.

The clap. The nod. But this strange clapping doesn’t seem to encourage the players. The opposite, in fact. In response the players turn and hurl abuse at their coaches. They scream, they hit balls into the stadium seats, they slam rackets into the surface then make their way to the baseline to wait for a polite silence to fill the arena.

And the arena does fall silent. So silent that I can hear my wife crunch down on a dorito. The sound seems to reverberate out of all proportion to the size of the cheesy snack. I think Medvedev has heard it. He stops mid-serve. I shift sideways in my chair, trying to distance myself from my pagan wife, fearful that Medvedev, or this strange crowd may turn on her.

My fear is not unreasonable. There is a strange dichotomy to tennis. They dress in white, strawberries and cream is a thing on the stadium menus, outwardly it screams politeness and restraint. But the language of the game is violence. Overheads are “smashed”, serves are “thundering” and players aren’t eliminated from tournaments, they “crash out” as if they were going through the tournament at 200 km/hr.

The good players, I am told, are trying to hit the ball “through the court”.

(Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

I wonder if all this pent-up aggression is a response to the confines of the game. The coaches are seated in neat little boxes, the umpires are up on high in their ivory towers. On court the players must stay between the lines. But nothing is more confining than the scoring.

One of the joys of sport is seeing an absolute shellacking, of watching a batter grind a toothless attack into the dust and go past 100, 200, 300 or at the rugby league watching on as a team runs up 60, 70 or 80 against a mentally broken opponent.

But not tennis. Just the four points in a game, six games in a set and then back to the start. Only the tie-break offers any uncapped opportunity for amassing points but even that is called off if one player gets two points ahead. It is all very frustrating.

The point is played, the danger passes. The lady beside me claps and nods. “Unbelievable,” she says. It was another net cord. I make the mistake of eye contact. She asks me how much I paid for my ticket. I tell her. “Not me,” she says. “Got it free.”

She’s gloating, a tennis insider. I feel like clapping and nodding. But I don’t. I go to respond but I am met with a stern “Shhhhhhhh” as she points to the court. And then it’s over. Medvedev wins 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. I am down $800. Alexei Popyrin is up $50,000.

Two days later I receive an email from Ticketmaster responding to my request to exchange my ticket. “I’m sorry that we weren’t able to get back to you. We have received a high volume of emails. We’ll mark this thread as resolved.”

The email should have said, “You played the lucky dip and you lost, buddy,” followed by the clapping emoji.

It’s a strange crowd, the tennis crowd.