Tennis is simply too tough. The sport of gentlemen, in ages gone by played in impeccable white, a sport in which a handshake is sincerely expected at the end of a match (got it, Tomas?), is cruel and tough to the point of sadistic. In all other sports, there are close calls, matches or playoffs or games that are decided by an inch, a second, a point or simple luck. But tennis is one sport in which you face that loss alone. (Spare me the golf comparison; in golf, one person walks away a winner after a Sunday afternoon stroll through a garden; a whole bunch of others get to the club house and cash a check. No comparison.)

Recently, the New England Patriots lost another Super Bowl to the New York Giants, after having a regular season that was better than that of the winners. But rest assured that in the locker room after the loss, the camaraderie was there. Some long faces, some sour attitudes, but the team was there. Your buddies were there. They shared that loss, Rafa walked back to the locker room with nobody to say to him, “Wow, we almost had it.”

I was thinking about that after watching some inane X Games footage. Don’t get me wrong. Some of the kids that partake in these extreme sports are brave to the point of lunacy (actually, some have got to be raving mad). When you get a snow mobile and flip it in mid-air and basically crash-land the bloody thing 100 feet away from where you started, you really have to accept that your friendly life insurance salesman is not coming to knock on your door anytime soon. But the point is more subtle. And it is that all those sports are APPRECIATION sports. You take your jump, the judges pass their verdict, and somebody else comes along for his turn. So if after you perform a “Triple double-twist Hungarian helicopter with a Samoan back flip,” the judges decide that it was not as good as the “Forward-twisting hot dog jump with a Swedish screwdriver” of your opponent, you can always go back to the locker room (or bar) and be told by a good friend, “You was robbed.”

Some consolation has to be found in that statement. In those sports (as in Figure Skating, Gymnastics, Diving and such), you can always hide behind the fact that it is a subjective call. It is the polar opposite of the brutally honest scoring system in tennis, in which 70-68 in the fifth set is certainly very close, hard to believe, incredible to behold, but impossible to refute.

Other sports have the same mental escape clauses. Don’t tell me that not one single Boston Red Sox player is still drinking single malt whiskey late at night and not thinking, “If it weren’t for Bill Buckner…” At least one Baltimore Raven must have said, “Damn kicker!” Just as one 49-er must be pretty mad at the fumbling receiver that let the Giants score that winning field goal. In team sports, you can always say your team did not back you up. You went four for four, with six RBIs, and the team lost? Not your fault. You scored 3,000 points in the season and still did not make the playoffs? I mean, get traded, man!

Not so in tennis. In tennis, (cliché warning!), there is, “nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.” No way to say, “well, it wasn’t MY fault.” Not even in doubles. Maybe your partner butchered match point into the net, but ,really, how about that wide open passing shot you overhit by six feet when you had break point? Tennis is cruelty revisited, for the loser.

It gets to be so bad, that some money could be waged about who feels better: Rafa, still perhaps mulling about that backhand down the line with an open court, or Maria Sharapova, simply thinking, “nothing to do, really. She was better.” (she can perhaps find solace in that she is prettier than winner Victoria Azarenka, a debatable point, but any escape clause is welcome).

The great matches hinge on one or two points. Quick test: Do you remember the score when Andy Roddick missed that high backhand volley against Federer? A few fans will. Many will remember it was set point to go up 2-0. Almost everybody remembers not only that Roddic then lost the match; we also remember when and where it was (Wimbledon Final, 2009). And that is the point: you say the words Andy-Roger-High Backhand Volley and we all know immediately what match you are talking about. And again, putting words in somebody else’s brain: I would bet money that Andy not only remembers the score, he remembers the point in all of its disastrous development.

The Aussie Open Final was an example of bravery, but we can go back to many matches and see how they ended to realize how tough it was to go through them. Bjorn Borg fell to his knees while John McEnroe laid face down on the grass after their epic 8-6 fifth set in the 1980 Wimbledon Final. Nadal was on his back and Federer was slumping towards the net after their epic 2008 match at Wimbledon, following Nadal’s win. Roger had played a courageous match. But he lost. Accept it.

Perhaps there is one exception. During the 1988 Masters Final, Ivan Lendl slugged it with Boris Becker for five long sets. They reached the fifth set and went to a tiebreak. Lendl was serving at 5-6, facing match point, and engaged in a long point, keeping the ball safely high and over the net. Becker, more temperamental and volatile, eventually saw a ball  tohis liking and cracked a huge backhand. The ball flew straight down the middle, right towards where Lendl was standing, only to clip the top of the net and drop on Lendl’s side, landing with the bounce of a rotten peach. Laconic to the end, Lendl walked towards the net, shook hands with Becker, and that was it. Perhaps, to this day, Lendl sometime thinks, “Damn net!”


Photo: Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal at the 2011 BNP Paribas Open by Jason Wood.