DozzyWho's In Your Car? Part 4
January 28th 2010 04:57
There’s a car. A four-wheel drive perhaps. It’s travelling at high speed in treacherous conditions. The car will soon veer off the road and drop from a steep cliff into the ocean. The driver and all four passengers don’t stand a chance. The question is, out of all the oxygen thieves in the public eye, who do you nominate to fill those five seats?
Front passenger
Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray
The summer of tennis is upon us and there’s a bloody fistfight on Rod Laver Arena between a couple of unlikeable tennis players for the pleasure of riding shotgun in my car. Jim Courier is pacing courtside ready to pounce for the post-match interview and the player’s box is chock-full of models with horrified expressions on their faces which could mean they are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of their partners or they just caught a glimpse of the fat content of their blueberry muffin. I’m guessing it’s the latter. Because Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic are the type of blokes most of us would like to see doing push-ups on a busy freeway. If you had a gun and one bullet and those two to choose from, you’d do the right thing and bludgeon them both to death with the gun so they felt it good and proper. Why waste the bullet if they aint gonna taste the blood?
But alas, this is just me indulging in fantasy as the likelihood of these two sods engaging in any physical contact is remote. We are more certain of seeing Jelena Jankovic win a match of substance than those two go handbags at 20 paces. And it’s a shame because it makes my job of nominating one of them to survive exceptionally difficult. It’s like choosing which episode of Mad About You made me want to violently throw up. Hint: they all did.
Unfortunately the fact there are two elite tennis players vying for a position to go off the cliff is not just an indictment on the individuals but also the game of tennis itself. Don’t get me wrong, this is a sport that is regularly capable of the sublime. When Roger Federer is peeling off impossible cross-court backhand passing shots that dip and catch the line there is probably no more aesthetically pleasing human activity in the world with the possible exception of Sienna Miller’s niteclub dance scene in Layer Cake.
Five-set marathons that push into the early hours of the morning at Rod Laver Arena are a summer institution on a par with zooper doopers and groin chaff. Even the stereotypical metronomic Spanish baseliner has improved his reputation on the back of the physical specimen that is Rafael Nadal. He’s even risen further in my standings since he stopped dressing like a retarded personal trainer. A couple of years ago, when he was wearing his cut-off tank top and three-quarter pants ensemble, I kept expecting him to pull a 20 bag of pills out of a bumbag and start doing the Melbourne shuffle on match point.
But there is some kind of inherently frustrating aspect of tennis at the elite level that prevents me from caring about it for the other 50 weeks of the year and it’s encapsulated in the Murray-Djokovic combination. If you study these two you would think that being a professional tennis player was a brutal occupation on a par with working in a Bolivian coal mine or being Simon Cowell’s missus. It’s all moping and tantrums and injury time-outs with those two, you’d see less sooking on vaccination day at Westbreen Primary School.
Case in point, recently the All-England club finally installed a roof on the main court at Wimbledon. Now, if any sporting tournament was desperate for a retractable roof it was Wimbledon and any opportunity to deny Cliff Richard an audience should be welcomed and encouraged. But this improvement was not up to scratch for Murray who complained to anyone in ear shot that it was now ‘too hot’ indoors.
Andy Murray has earned US$9,920,493 in a four-year career that is widely accepted to be in its infancy, by my calculations he should have to play in a kiln wearing a sumo fat suit for a thousand years to deserve that kind of scratch. You know how many lifetimes it would take a Bolivian coal miner to earn that much money? Well, I don’t have the figures handy, but I’m tipping it’s a lot. And even chewing a shitload of cocoa leaves can’t remove the sour taste of injustice (although it will improve the conversation).
Another possible reason why Australians don’t take any notice of the sport for the rest of the year could be the Channel Seven coverage. I’m beginning to feel really uncomfortable with JA cooing in my ear between points like a horny teenager. Whispering breathlessly about ‘court coverage’ and something called the ‘deuce court’. Its making me think of Gavin Hopper and that gives me the heebee-geebees.
And have you heard Henri LeConte commentate a match? He sounds like he’d be pretty entertaining if he was your wingman out at a cocktail party where you didn’t know anyone, but when it comes to describing a tennis match he’s the aural equivalent of sitting next to Rosie Perez on a long haul flight to somewhere cold. He’s bouncing off the walls like a
member of Hi-Five, muttering something in French about Matts Wilander’s forehand. Slip him a mickey Fitzy for the sake of our sanity!
But I digress, my aim is to nominate one of these two for the front seat and after careful consideration there’s one particular instance that puts one candidate head and shoulders above the other. Even in a sport that is rife with questionable injury withdrawals Djokovic is making the mid-match gib his calling card. Down two sets and a break? Call the trainer…Novak does it. Four times he has withdrawn from crucial Grand Slam matches while trailing, that is a truly horrible stat for an athlete participating in a non-contact sport. His withdrawal in the quarter finals against Roddick last year while he was defending his title took the cake. Once again it was ‘too hot’…don’t make me bring up those Bolivian coal miners again Novak, you squib!
Front passenger
Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray
The summer of tennis is upon us and there’s a bloody fistfight on Rod Laver Arena between a couple of unlikeable tennis players for the pleasure of riding shotgun in my car. Jim Courier is pacing courtside ready to pounce for the post-match interview and the player’s box is chock-full of models with horrified expressions on their faces which could mean they are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of their partners or they just caught a glimpse of the fat content of their blueberry muffin. I’m guessing it’s the latter. Because Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic are the type of blokes most of us would like to see doing push-ups on a busy freeway. If you had a gun and one bullet and those two to choose from, you’d do the right thing and bludgeon them both to death with the gun so they felt it good and proper. Why waste the bullet if they aint gonna taste the blood?
But alas, this is just me indulging in fantasy as the likelihood of these two sods engaging in any physical contact is remote. We are more certain of seeing Jelena Jankovic win a match of substance than those two go handbags at 20 paces. And it’s a shame because it makes my job of nominating one of them to survive exceptionally difficult. It’s like choosing which episode of Mad About You made me want to violently throw up. Hint: they all did.
Heartwarming crap
Five-set marathons that push into the early hours of the morning at Rod Laver Arena are a summer institution on a par with zooper doopers and groin chaff. Even the stereotypical metronomic Spanish baseliner has improved his reputation on the back of the physical specimen that is Rafael Nadal. He’s even risen further in my standings since he stopped dressing like a retarded personal trainer. A couple of years ago, when he was wearing his cut-off tank top and three-quarter pants ensemble, I kept expecting him to pull a 20 bag of pills out of a bumbag and start doing the Melbourne shuffle on match point.
Rafael Nadal at Tiesto
But there is some kind of inherently frustrating aspect of tennis at the elite level that prevents me from caring about it for the other 50 weeks of the year and it’s encapsulated in the Murray-Djokovic combination. If you study these two you would think that being a professional tennis player was a brutal occupation on a par with working in a Bolivian coal mine or being Simon Cowell’s missus. It’s all moping and tantrums and injury time-outs with those two, you’d see less sooking on vaccination day at Westbreen Primary School.
Case in point, recently the All-England club finally installed a roof on the main court at Wimbledon. Now, if any sporting tournament was desperate for a retractable roof it was Wimbledon and any opportunity to deny Cliff Richard an audience should be welcomed and encouraged. But this improvement was not up to scratch for Murray who complained to anyone in ear shot that it was now ‘too hot’ indoors.
Andy Murray has earned US$9,920,493 in a four-year career that is widely accepted to be in its infancy, by my calculations he should have to play in a kiln wearing a sumo fat suit for a thousand years to deserve that kind of scratch. You know how many lifetimes it would take a Bolivian coal miner to earn that much money? Well, I don’t have the figures handy, but I’m tipping it’s a lot. And even chewing a shitload of cocoa leaves can’t remove the sour taste of injustice (although it will improve the conversation).
Another possible reason why Australians don’t take any notice of the sport for the rest of the year could be the Channel Seven coverage. I’m beginning to feel really uncomfortable with JA cooing in my ear between points like a horny teenager. Whispering breathlessly about ‘court coverage’ and something called the ‘deuce court’. Its making me think of Gavin Hopper and that gives me the heebee-geebees.
And have you heard Henri LeConte commentate a match? He sounds like he’d be pretty entertaining if he was your wingman out at a cocktail party where you didn’t know anyone, but when it comes to describing a tennis match he’s the aural equivalent of sitting next to Rosie Perez on a long haul flight to somewhere cold. He’s bouncing off the walls like a
member of Hi-Five, muttering something in French about Matts Wilander’s forehand. Slip him a mickey Fitzy for the sake of our sanity!
BIIIIILLLLLLLLYYYYYY!
But I digress, my aim is to nominate one of these two for the front seat and after careful consideration there’s one particular instance that puts one candidate head and shoulders above the other. Even in a sport that is rife with questionable injury withdrawals Djokovic is making the mid-match gib his calling card. Down two sets and a break? Call the trainer…Novak does it. Four times he has withdrawn from crucial Grand Slam matches while trailing, that is a truly horrible stat for an athlete participating in a non-contact sport. His withdrawal in the quarter finals against Roddick last year while he was defending his title took the cake. Once again it was ‘too hot’…don’t make me bring up those Bolivian coal miners again Novak, you squib!
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