Chennai Open 2014 Day 1: Learning that little bit extra about the players

Stanislas Wawrinka at the Chennai Open

What does it mean to be a professional tennis player? That would be no secret if athletes from the racquet world were as eloquent about their feelings as characters from a Shakespeare play. But the harsh truth in the testosterone-driven, ultra-competitive tennis world is that the true innermost thoughts of players are almost never expressed in public, and certainly not when a microphone is thrust into their faces (unless, of course, the player in question is Ernests Gulbis).

When you attend a tennis tournament, however, some of those secrets start to unravel, if not by design then by chance. Day 1 at the 2014 Aircel Chennai Open may sound hollow and uneventful on paper, but to an attendee at the stadium, the proceedings were both engaging and insightful. When you get to see the players going through their routines – some walking off the practice court, others sitting in the stands waiting for the preceding match to get over – you get to know, without a word being said, just that little bit more about these supposedly mysterious personalities. Once a player stops being judged solely on the basis of the forehands, backhands and serves that he hits on the court, he becomes instantly more human and, by extension, more relatable.

Marcel Granollers can walk freely across the stadium’s tarred passageways without making a single head turn; having got a break from being the centre of attention (as any top 50 player is when his matches are shown on TV), he looks just like any other tennis player brooding over his mishits in practice. So what if he frequently gives fits to top 10 players with his rock-solid baseline game?

Frederik Nielsen, fighting for his life in his qualifying final round match against Alexander Kudryavtsev, suddenly breaks into a laugh when he misses a sitter of a forehand which puts him in danger of being broken. That may sound a little crazy when put in those words, but in the heat of the moment during the match, it looked very real, very poignant, and very revealing. At that moment, Nielsen, who most people in the crowd had probably never heard of before the tournament, seemed like an old buddy who you wanted to pat on the back and reassure with the words, “It’s alright.”

That’s not to say that all tennis players lose their high-profile edge when seen live. Stanislas Wawrinka, for instance, is clearly the biggest draw at the Chennai Open. While he may seem relatively diminutive (not in terms of physicality, of course) in his battles with the Nadals and the Djokovics of the world, out here in Chennai, as the highest-ranked player, he is the star of the show.

Everything about him, right from his pre-tournament press briefing to his brief appearance at the Aircel party, sends people into a frenzy. That’s what a gorgeous backhand and a string of strong results can do – it can make even a player as shy and unassuming as Wawrinka turn into a larger-than-life figure.

And then there are the local favourites, the players who elicit the loudest cheers no matter what the level of play or the quality of opposition. Contrary to what you might expect, though, the wall of secrecy remains intact with these players. Ramkumar Ramanathan, a 19-year-old Chennai lad, is unusually emotive in his do-or-die match against Norbert Gombos. The match goes the distance, and the vocal crowd gives him its full support until he goes past the finish line, 6-3 in the third. Ramanathan now finds himself in the main draw, but other than the fact that he plays well with the crowd behind him, you learn little about Ramanathan the person.

Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Rohan Bopanna at the cook-off

Another local favourite, Rohan Bopanna, arrives at the venue seemingly determined to entertain. He and his reunited Pakistani doubles partner Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi can’t stop smiling and joking around, even in the face of the serious press conference questions posed to them. Their Twitter chat with the fans is an entirely hit-and-giggle affair, and the cooking competition at the Hyatt even more so. The food that they put up seems legit, though – most of the people who taste it look pleased rather than dismayed to have done so. Bopanna comes out the winner, but not before a lot of showboating from both, and a lot of titters from the ladies in the audience.

Bopanna and Qureshi continue to be the centre of attention as they arrive to much fanfare at the Aircel party, while Yuki Bhambri, once the shining light of Indian tennis, goes largely unnoticed. And that makes you realize that attending a tournament may tell you a lot about the players themselves, but the reactions that these players evoke from the people around them also tells you a lot about crowd behaviour.

The most important thing that crowd reactions tell you, of course, is that public memory is short. Bopanna and Qureshi, and even Wawrinka, have been grabbing headlines in recent months with their eventful on-court and off-court happenings, and so are duly rewarded with plenty of star value. On the other hand, Bhambri hasn’t exactly set the ATP stage alight with his performances lately, and has been relegated to the back of everyone’s mind, if only temporarily. It would be a brave man who would predict that these same suspects – Bopanna, Qureshi and Wawrinka – will be the biggest draws at next year’s edition of the Chennai Open, rather than, say, a Marcel Granollers or a Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (who lost in the first round on Centre Court today, much to the disappointment of the crowd).

So at the end of it all, what does it mean to be a professional tennis player? With their individual personality quirks, their wide-ranging places in the ATP pecking order, their vastly differing playing styles, and the disparity in the crowd reception they inspire, it means greatly different things to different players. And there’s no better way to behold those differences in all their glory than attending a tennis tournament live.

This article was originally published here: Aircel Chennai Open official website