I know it's always a huge difference between watching a match on TV and watching it live and yesterday's conditions (freezing cold, late evening) surely had an impact about everybody's mood.
It sure is very different watching on tv and watching live, especially as close as we were to the players. We don't get the whole perspective of the court or the play. But we do see more of the player’s body language.
And as davis said, Marat's body language was negative almost from the start, but also as she said you can have as many different opinions about one event as there were people watching it.
I can't really tell how was the match, tenniswise. I honestly can't remember. I was so focused on Marat, on cheering for him through every point, under my breath, that I most of the times didn't even know what the score was.
This was almost like one of those surreal films, or at best an eerie story from a cold winter night.
But let’s start at the beginning.
It started to rain very early and from then on the temperature dropped constantly to almost artic levels. After spending the whole afternoon waiting for the rain to clear so that at least some of the outside matches could be played and that would give a chance for Marat’s match to be put center court, as the time went by I began thinking Marat wouldn’t play at all and his match would be moved to the next day. But then Annie’s SMS arrived and we learned that the schedule had been changed and Marat would play in center court after Blake/Clement.
This is were my memory started to go awol. I remember Clement being a spoilt brat, always picking at the ballgirls but I don’t remember the match (yesterday I had even forgotten I had seen Blake play, imagine that!).
Anyway Marat finally comes on court and first shock is: he cut his hair. But then we were busy jumping up and down on the stands to warm up (me) or wrapping ourselves in the clothes Lena fetch for us (thanks again Lena, you were an angel) that the haircut didn’t matter much.
The stadium was so empty that the umpire asked everybody to come down and occupy all the empty chairs near the court. But still there weren’t enough people to make it cosier. It echoed and every sneeze, and every low voice comment appeared louder than it was. The electric generators of the lights were buzzing and even the balls had a sad eerie sound.
At this point I must tell you that the organization had assigned a group of ten kids from local schools to be the supporters for each player at every match. They were usually positioned at the top angle of one of the tops of the court, opposite each other. So far I hadn’t even paid much attention to them in the other matches, but that night in the silence that surrounded us the cheers and the little singsong voices sounded strangely loud and misplaced.
To make it even more strange two or three grown up (and obviously drunk) guys decided to join in on the kids, and almost from the start you had “DAVAI MA-RAT! DAVAI MA-RAT!” or “LET’S GO MA-RAT, LET’S GO MA-RAT!” in booming male voices that echoed all over the place.
I’m glad I sat next to Lena because both of us were constantly talking under our breath “Davai Marat!”, “You can do it!” “Believe!” and “Yes, you can!” everytime he shook his head. At the time I didn’t think he could hear us, even though when I whispered at one point “Just breathe!” he did just that: blew out hard a sigh before getting ready for the next point. But when the annoying and stupid “DA-VAI MA-RAT! DA-VAI MA-RAT!” and “MARAT I LOVE YOU!” in those drawling male voices really began to sound louder and to get on our nerves, then I whispered to him a bit louder “Forget about us!”, meaning forget the crowd. He looked straight at me for a second and I only had time to add “Just play for yourself.”
It was getting colder and colder, and looking at those two players in front of me with their sweat freezing on their skin made me feel even worse. JC kept returning the balls and Marat kept getting more and more frustrated.
The kids were quiet by now but the guys in the stands still wouldn’t shut up, shouting between every point, and I snapped and davis snapped and we shouted at them “Shut up guys! Stop it!”. Marat was obviously annoyed by them. At one point, as the guys kept chanting he even stopped preparing to serve and looked up with his eyes closed and a desperate expression on his face. And at another moment the Russian girl heard him scream “I can’t hear you anymore!” I think that was probably one of the reasons he asked the umpire to hit the ceiling with the ball. If it had been me, I would have hit the guys instead.
Finnally the security guys decided it was about time and the annoying supporters were made to come down and sent off the stadium.
It was not Marat’s day, that’s for sure. He didn’t believe he could win, he was frustrated and he was crushed, and that cry out to Sasha, wanting to give up because playing like this would probably get him baggeled by Federer was a sign of how little faith he had in himself.
Still I don’t regret being there. There are some experiences you never forget, some matches that will stick in your mind forever and that one, with all the strange things that surround it and the electric charge of emotions that wrapped it, was one of them.
Kisses everybody!
)
