From doubters to sinners
...in circles and back
The year when Jannik Sinner won hist first major title at the Australian Open he turned from a boy to a man. LOL. Can you believe I started the newsletter this way? But in this ridiculous beginning lies a piece of truth. I had known Jannik for a while, we would sometimes speak German to each other in several hallways of tennis tournaments and then move on with our own separate lives. I had to deal with retiring, and he had to get used to, well, becoming one of the biggest sporting stars in the world. We were very obviously at entirely different stations of our careers and lives.
Before the Australian Open started, we had yet another one of our brief hallway chats, how are you, yeah, good, how are you, yeah, great, how was the off-season, nice, how was yours, nicer, it’s good to be back. That’s about as far as tennis conversations in hallways go. I might have thrown in a self-pitying Can’t-you-forsake-all-of-Italy-and-come-over-to-play-for-the-Germans thingy because I still do that whenever I see him. He mostly laughs and waves through the air as if he was swatting an annoying fly (me).
I walked away from that 75-second conversation and told my coach a few moments later that Jannik Sinner would win the Australian Open that year. To be fair, he was already one of the favourites to win the title, so it wasn’t like I picked a random guy in the draw and a few weeks later proclaimed myself the second coming of Nostradamus. But there was something different about him. He oozed inner strength and - here I will expose myself as a middle-aged woman using a word no self-respecting person should ever use – swag.
When I interviewed Dirk Nowitzki last week, he reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. A few days later, I saw Jannik Sinner return to the big stage in Rome and I knew who Dirk had reminded me of. It was Jannik. There is an inner strength, a hidden core of a solidified identity behind their down-to-earthness and humility. They know who they are and what they want. What it translates to on the court, tennis or basketball, is a killer instinct. The complete absence of doubt will carry you to heights of performance us mortals could never comprehend.
I was always riddled by doubts. I started my day with doubting whether oatmeal was the right choice for breakfast (it wasn’t, turns out I’m allergic to oats) and ended it with doubting my entire life as a professional tennis player.
Jannik and Dirk, Novak and Roger, Rafa and Serena, Aryna, Steffi, Martina, Carlos, the list goes on and on. They seemed to have always known who and what they are: tennis players. Professional athletes. Maybe they had doubts, but they swatted them like annoying flies. I, on the other hand, wanted to be a writer and a tennis player, an editor and a TV personality, a journalist and Indiana Jones. Sometimes all at once. I’m saying this without judgment. Having a daily identity crisis makes for a very interesting life. I’m not complaining. It sure didn’t help on court though.
We can see what happens when the absence of doubt becomes absent with Iga Swiatek right now. Everything that seemed natural and innate becomes artificial and forced. What once flowed now stutters, what once was natural now is hard. It’s almost easier for somebody like me who one day just got used to having doubts. They were foes no more, only bizarre voices in my head. Iga, on the other hand, never had to live with them. All she ever knew how to be was the best tennis player in the world. She will calibrate again, that’s what champions do.
While all of them are very impressive and in our perfectly optimized world seem to be the people we strive to be, I want to shout out all of us doubters who still manage to get through life and gain some happiness along the way even if we’ll probably doubt it a mere minute later. Leave us be. We’re awesome (probably) and we know what we’re doing (do we?) and we’ll get there (eventually?).
And one of these days: We’ll have swag.
Things that make me happy:
Rome has made me very happy. I had a billion espressi that had me on the verge of a heart attack and the way the sun shines on the buildings when it sets and how the air smells when a vespa speeds past you and the way Italians say pronto when they answer their phone and the fact that I heard the bells ring when the new pope got elected and that I was in the exact place where Caravaggio killed a man after losing a tennis match and focaccia and suppli and by the time I had my twentieth gelato and saw the fiftieth church from the inside I was ready to move to Italy and Rome and live my own personal La Grande Belleza. A great movie and my favourite of all time.
Things that make me unhappy:
When I go shopping for clothes, I sometimes like to hold a certain piece up to my face before fully committing to a changing room try-on. The colour, the style – you can tell a lot by just holding it up to your face. Well, guess what, most stores have somehow gotten rid of mirrors IN A CLOTHING STORE where you go to SEE how new clothes might look on you. Another terrible development in retail stores is the one where they ONLY have mirrors outside. So, you have to trot out, shame-filled and shy, into a public room with OTHER people to see that the red dress you thought might look CUTE looks absolutely HORRENDOUS. It would have been enough to see all that in the privacy of my shattered self-confidence. No need to make it an Off-Broadway tragedy.
Apologies for the delay, my fingers were too shaky from an acute espresso-induced anxiety attack. I will see you all next week, dehydrated and happy.
Yours truly, Andrea
Entschuldigung. NIEMAND, und ich meine NIEMAND sieht in einer Umkleidekabine gut aus, während er oder sie sich bückt um in die Hose (selbst wenn es die richtige Größe ist) zu kommen. Vom Licht wollen wir gar nicht reden.
Es kann also nur von Vorteil sein, nur außerhalb der Kabine Kabinen zu haben - selbst wenn das Kleid doch nicht so süß aussieht wie man dachte. Immerhin ist man aufrecht. Man sollte aber in jedem Fall die Sportsocken ausziehen, von denen man dachte, dass sie in den schwarzen Boots eh niemand sehen wird.
Und während ich das schreibe hat Jannik Sinner mit einem SEHR offensichtlichen Problem am rechten Oberschenkel doch noch das Match gegen Tommy Paul gewonnen.
Hat Frau Petkovic mal wieder recht gehabt.
Well, each week there are some great nuggets, placed in the piece like a fine gem, waiting to be noticed. But this week, it must be a clue to a secret desire to be hired as a comedy writer - “…… a middle aged woman …….”. It’s a good thing I was not eating when I read that part! It would have been one of those laugh so hard moments the person next to you gets sprayed. Andrea, that line might work in the diary for some Friday in, say 2045 or so. But not this week! Nope. And those of us testing the upper limits of that age bracket do indeed know where it starts. :)