The trophy ceremony ran longer than the third set, which is saying something, because the third set went to a tiebreak and a medical timeout for what the broadcast helpfully captioned as ‘hip mobility.’ The new champion of the Australian Open got the microphone, took a deep breath the way her breathwork coordinator taught her to, and proceeded to thank nineteen people by name. Her mother came in at number fourteen. The sleep coach was number three.
I wrote them down. I had time. The ceremony went forty minutes and at one point a man in a sport coat handed her a small ceremonial spoon for reasons that were not explained to the home viewer.
Number one was the head coach, which is fine, that’s how it’s always been. Number two was the ‘performance coach,’ which I understand to mean a second coach who handles the part of coaching the first coach doesn’t want to do. Number three, the sleep coach. Number four, the recovery lead. Number five, the nutritionist. Number six, the assistant nutritionist, who I have to assume handles weekends. Number seven was a ‘data analyst.’ Number eight was a ‘mental performance specialist,’ who is different from a sports psychologist in ways the broadcast did not clarify and I did not Google because I was eating crackers.
Somewhere around number eleven we got to the physiotherapist, and around twelve, the stringer, which is the only one of these jobs that existed when I was young and is the only one of these jobs that is actually about tennis. The stringer should be number two, frankly. The stringer is the reason the racket works. The stringer goes ahead of the sleep coach. I will die on this hill.
I called Ray Kowalczyk during the long pause where she thanked her ‘vibes architect.’ Ray watched it too. Ray is a man who once drove a station wagon four hundred miles with a torn rotator cuff to scout a junior tournament, and Ray said to me, on the phone, in the voice of a man who has given up, ‘Duke, what in the hell is a vibes architect.’ I told him I didn’t know but she thanked them before she thanked her mom and Ray hung up on me.
Now, look. I want to be fair to the kid who won. She hit a forehand in the second set that bent space-time. She came back from a break down twice. She is, by any honest measure, an unbelievable tennis player. The problem isn’t the player. The problem is the apparatus around her, the eighteen-person caravan that now travels with one woman so she can hit a ball over a net, and the way the whole sport has decided this is normal and dignified and worth a forty-minute speech.
Coach DiMaggio had me, an assistant who also taught earth science, and a man named Pete who showed up on Tuesdays to fix the blocking sleds. That was the whole staff. We won a sectional. Pete was paid in sandwiches. Pete did not get thanked at the trophy ceremony because there was no trophy ceremony, the trophy was handed to us in a gym while a custodian mopped twenty feet away, and DiMaggio’s speech was ‘Don’t be jerks on the bus home.’
The on-court coaching is the part that still gets me. They allow it now. The coach is permitted to stand up between points and yell tactical instructions like the player can’t see the court from the court. We used to call this ‘being coached from the stands’ and it was a violation. Now it’s a feature. They put a microphone on it.
And the cooling vest. I have to mention the cooling vest. During the changeover she put on a vest that was apparently full of refrigerated gel packs and sat very still while a man timed her heart rate on an iPad. My father once played a doubleheader in a wool uniform in August and went home and shoveled a driveway. I’m not saying that was better. I’m saying nobody handed him a vest.
The champion, to her enormous credit, did eventually thank her mother. Her mother was in the box. Her mother was crying. Her mother, I would bet a hundred dollars, did not know what a vibes architect was either, and that is the only thing about this whole ceremony that gave me hope.
Denise is bringing chili. She says the recipe is from a podcast.