We offer you the editorial of issue 78 of We Love Tennis Magazine which is a reflection on “fear”.
There is no real connection between the Netflix documentary on Mardy Fish and the fishing Daniil Medvedev gave us, except to understand that it can happen that the soul takes precedence over the spirit, that the stake goes beyond the event and that the will prevails over the past. The final that Daniil Medvedev proposed to us is symbolic in more than one way, because the Russian player was waiting for it rather than fearing it, he wanted it more than anything after two failures at this stage in the Grand Slam. So he put his hand down, he avoided looking at his opponent, the audience, he became deaf to the cries of the crowd. Opposite, as paralyzed by History which stretched out its arms to him, the world number one entered the famous spiral of dark thoughts, confusion, imprecise gesture.
What Novak experienced is ultimately quite similar to the anxiety attack evoked by Mardy Fish in his documentary, unable to return to the court against Roger Federer at the 2012 US Open when that was what he wanted. the most in the world since his early youth. As the American player explains in this poignant “film”, it is never good in high performance sport to talk about your weaknesses and fears. For some specialists, this consists of giving keys to future opponents, of exposing themselves when the codes of tennis virility do not allow it.
So there is something in Novak’s defeat that reassures us. We may be a rock, an extraordinary fighter, we can be overtaken by fear. You can control your emotions, do meditation and have prepared your duel like never before, the circumstances of the confrontation can suddenly make you vulnerable.
Because if tennis is above all a game against yourself, it is also a duel against your opponent. This is what makes its charm and its particularity. We are alone, but accompanied. It is not enough to run or to cross a bar, it is necessary to find the solutions and to fight.
This Sunday, September 12, 2021, Novak was finally ready for everything, but not the essential. Daniil only dreamed of two things: throwing some bait and luring the shark into its net to suffocate it. Finished the teeth of the sea, this bloodthirsty beast without heart, place to the silence of the carp or to the noise of the salmon which goes up the river. In the end, the oxygen was Russian that night in New York. Daniil could logically throw himself to the ground, exhausted, while Nole was still looking for air …
Posted on Monday, October 4, 2021 at 5:55 PM
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