Fandemonium

Australians know good tennis when they see it

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Across the hallway from the players' cafeteria here sits a board featuring action shots of the top 10 Australian pros. It's not exactly a who's who of tennis' elite, as names like Joseph Sirianni, Jaymon Crabb and Adriana Szili figure prominently in the mix. Only one person on the board was a credible threat to win this event: Lleyton Hewitt, who is not merely Australia's top player, but also the world's top dog two years running.

Yet when Hewitt was locked in mortal combat against Younes El Aynaoui the other day, the 14,000 or so fans in Rod Laver Arena did a strange thing. Nothing. Here was the pride of Australia down a set deep in the fourth, and there was no rallying cry. No fevered chants of "Aussie, Aussie, oy, oy, oy." No "Clap your hands, stomp your feet" clamoring. One guy wearing a backward baseball cap and an intense expression yelled, "C'mon!" at the top of his lungs. But that was Hewitt himself.

It's not that fans are ambivalent toward Hewitt. He may not be the equal of St. Patrick Rafter, but Hewitt undeniably is maturing and, warts and all, he is the world's top player. No, the crowd simply seemed to recognize that the homegrown kid was a bit flat on this day and that El Aynaoui was playing spectacularly. So they sat back, suppressed their loyalties and simply relished the tennis. After El Aynaoui took out the top seed and last remaining Australian, the crowd applauded the Moroccan like a conquering hero. "Most of the other countries where I play, I would be booed," El Aynaoui said. "They just wanted to see a good match."

Some 14 months ago on the same court, France stunned favored Australia to win the Davis Cup. After Nicolas Escudé beat Wayne Arthurs in the decisive match, the Melbourne fans stood to pay tribute to the French and hummed along as La Marseillaise blared on the P.A. This display of international brotherhood brought tears to the eyes of French captain Guy Forget.

Just how unseemly do the Aussies find nationalism? An outraged reader in Wednesday's Sydney Morning Herald wrote: "Is it too much to ask of Channel Seven that it instruct guest commentators that we don't 'root' for a team or a player? It seems particularly inappropriate to hear when describing a women's tennis match." (There's only one homer they like in Australia, and he's bald and works at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.)

And it's not just in tennis. Between Tuesday's afternoon and evening sessions, yours truly finagled a ticket and sat among 55,000 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds adjacent to Melbourne Park. The Aussies were playing Sri Lanka in the VB Cup, a limited-overs cricket tournament that precedes the World Cup. After a Sri Lankan batsman named Vaas finished his stint, the crowd serenaded him with a lengthy ovation. When I asked my seatmate why he was cheering for the opposition, he looked at me as though I had phrased the question in Urdu. "That was Vaas," he said, startled. "Weren't you watching? He did very well." I tried to imagine myself amid a sea of Raiders fans at the Super Bowl standing to clap for a valiant Tampa Bay defensive stand. That was Sapp. Weren't you watching? He tackled brilliantly.

This unwillingness to root, root, root solely for the home team hasn't always gone over so well. It was a personage no less than Hewitt, you'll recall, who several years back blasted Australian fans for being "stupid" after they had cheered an opponent's winner. Stupid? Guided as they are by their sensibilities and not blind devotion to their own, perhaps the sporting public here knows something the rest of the world doesn't.

Half volleys

El Aynaoui played another brilliant match Wednesday night before falling to American Andy Roddick, 21-19 in the fifth set. In yet another display of their good taste, nary a fan departed the stadium even though the match lasted until 1 a.m. local time. The only drawback: Practically nobody back in the States saw Roddick's thrilling victory. Had this battle taken place at the U.S. Open, we'd be calling it the match that saved American tennis. ... Rainer Schuettler rainered on the parade of David Nalbandian, winning in three sets to reach his first Grand Slam semifinal. ... After getting her hat handed to her by Kim Clijsters in Wednesday's first quarterfinal, Anastasia Myskina predicted that Clijsters would beat Serena Williams. What's more, she intimated that Justine Henin-Hardenne would take down Venus Williams. ... Think semifinalist Wayne Ferreira is still flying under the radar? The South African ate lunch in the media lounge Wednesday. ... Speaking of Ferreira, he is a whopping 0-10 vs. Andre Agassi, his foe in the semis. ... Sergei Bubka, son of the Ukranian pole vaulter, is entered in the junior draw. ... In the women's locker room, there were gripes aplenty about the decision to seed the Williams sisters higher in the doubles draw than last year's top team of Paola Suarez and Virginia Ruano Pascual. Down a set and a break to Conchita Martinez and Nadia Petrova, the second seeds rallied to win in a third-set tiebreak.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim is in Melbourne covering the Australian Open for the magazine. Click here to send a question to his Mailbag.

 

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