The lonely sport

It seems like every other year, a significant movie about boxing, baseball, basketball or even golf comes along.  In 2010, there was The Fighter which had generated a lot of interest from critics.  The year before that it was Mickey Rourke’s performance in Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.   But there’s nothing much about tennis, the sport I love to watch, the one I know everything about but don’t play.   I’m still waiting for Hollywood to produce the definitive tennis film.

It didn’t help that Rafa or Roger didn’t make the finals in Melbourne last weekend.  I suspect Novak and Andy’s game the other day was a low-rater for a Grand Slam finals.  If R & R continue to not be in top form, Hollywood would only be disinterested further. 

In the last decade, I can remember only three films that touched on tennis:  The Royal Tenenbaums, The Squid and the Whale and Matchpoint.  Woody Allen’s Matchpoint devotes the most screen time to the sport.   Its lead character is a tennis coach.    The net ball is used as a recurring metaphor – the ball, or one’s fortune, could go either way.   But it isn’t really about the life of a tennis player.  More like the social-climbing and murderous Tom Ripley in an all-white sports outfit.

So why the lack of tennis films in spite of the sport’s high stakes and the huge fan base of its top players?  Is it too graceful a sport and devoid of the violence that Scorsese (Raging Bull) could exploit for cinematic effect?  Too elitist, and has none of the ingredients of the familiar “working class hero who triumphs over life’s obstacles” genre?  It hasn’t got much sleaze?

I think it’s the loneliness of the sport.   There’s no other popular sport where the athlete is barred from getting too close to another person.  The tennister comes out of the locker room with no caddy to lug his huge bag.  He can’t speak with his opponent or his coach.   In between games, he sits under the umbrella by his lonesome.   Yeah, I don’t see a blockbuster happening with solitude.