Bureaucrats Clogging Things Up; Finals Mysteries

Is there a position less respected in the United States than the petty bureaucrat? Of course there are—probably used car salesmen enjoy a worse reputation. But overall, the petty bureaucrat, with his rules to observe and procedures to follow, inspires many to steel themselves. Everyone hates the DMV.

I’m not sure about the respect given to the bureaucrat in France, but they inspire similar feelings in me, particularly after two encounters today with the bureaucracy, one still ongoing.

Now, a word before continuing on to my specific examples. Many times people, including myself, criticize bureaucracy for their inconvenient decisions when in fact the only problem with the decision is that it failed to cater to ridiculous whims. Having occupied some bureaucratic roles myself, I can testify that many problems with the bureaucracy are not necessary the bureaucrat’s fault; many times they are the customer’s fault, for having outsized expectations. For example, no, I can’t necessarily watch out to make sure little camper Suzy calls you, anxious parent, at exactly 8:30 PM. Bureaucrats are not an abstract force; they don’t have all the levers, merely a few, and so it’s unreasonable to expect that every problem can be surmounted. But I think my particular grievances in this instance are well-founded (but don’t we all?).

The first was at the tennis center, where I needed to pick up my tickets again. Having waited in line twice already, and having been told that my tickets would be available, I had hoped and expected that they would, in fact, be available immediately. These were quickly dispelled when they couldn’t find my tickets. I found myself loitering once again, in the company of ten other souls—exactly like last time. Now, the unavailability of our tickets was mostly our faults. But still, given that they wanted to give us our tickets and we wanted to get them, given that we were occupying valuable space right in front of the desk, given that they had to devote much valuable time to sorting us out, given that they already knew in many of our cases (besides me, at least two were repeat victims) that we would need tickets from them, wouldn’t it make sense to actually have them available ahead of time and save everyone the time, effort and grief?

Actually grief overstates the matter considerably. The bureaucrats were not aggrieved at all. They chatted comfortably about small matters—where to get their haircuts, for example—while not doing a thing. Similarly, in the bureaucratic dealings that I’m entangled with, the receptionist chatted casually with someone else before telling me that he personally could not solve my problems. In France, they deal out their pains without focusing on you; at least in the States they dolefully deal out pains with an exclusive focus on you.

I ended up waiting about thirty minutes for my tickets and fortunately I made it to my seats without missing anything of the match. As for my current situation, all of a sudden, my username and password don’t work to log onto the system, so I find myself without internet. Now, relying on the informal information networks, supposedly the Fondation resets your passwords every month, which may be the most retarded system ever, seeing as this is not the CIA or anything. At any rate, supposedly there is an IT guy who comes around at night and during the afternoon, but the receptionist is “not too sure about it.” Words to inspire confidence, those.

****

I had great seats for the finals matches. They were on the baseline, right behind the left singles sideline, fourth row back for the Category 2, lower-bowl seating, which was behind the closer bleacher seats.

Having had great seats for both days, I’m very well pleased. But it’s very odd, in an economic sense, that I paid the same for the two seats and would have paid the same for a seat stuck by the TV booth. The sensitive pricing is possible and, if Econ 101 is correct, more efficient. Looking at the seats today, some of the ones wedged right up to the TV booth were empty and possibly unsold, probably a consequence of their being priced the same as my seats both days.

****

There were no cameras at the doubles match. The stadium was mostly full but not as full as it could have been nor ended up being. The crowd was appreciative but not enthusiastic. Doubles definitely suffers from a relative lack of interest relative to singles, which in the universe of sports, is a brown dwarf to football (both)’s red giant.

Watching the Bryan brothers take on Nestor-Some Serbian Dude (being without internet, I’m unable to find the proper spelling and so won’t attempt to butcher the spelling), it initially seemed a bit mysterious to me. Doubles is a swift, balletic game. The overheads grab major air and are well-rehearsed. It’s all quick angles, clever shifts and power moves. It feels as if doubles players fight on fighter jets while singles players bombard with artillery. That means that a long duel between two teams escalates tensions considerably, whereas many long encounters between two singles players have the feel of a phony war. The game moves much more briskly even while being well-played. So there are a number of rational reasons, related to the mechanics of the game itself, that doubles should not suffer a lack of relative popularity relative to singles.

Perhaps it’s the star system. Tennis thrives on stars the same way basketball did with Jordan, Bird and Magic and golf is with Tiger Woods. But this doesn’t necessarily jive with me, seeing as promoting two people doesn’t seem like a huge step in difficulty up from one. So I might accept that as a partial explanation but not a full one.

No, the true reason is that the vocabulary of the game is harder to be fluent in. Besides the confusion of scoring (why does it go 15, 30, 40? Why do sets end at 6? Etc.) in tennis in general, doubles tactics are more complicated and meaning that good tactical play can go underappreciated.

The crowd turned out to be singles-savvy but doubles-ignorant (not that I’m an expert or anything). The poetry of angles can be abstruse for the beginner. Compare that to football (our kind)—the aesthetic is extremely obvious: it doesn’t take much to appreciate one guy leveling another guy. Our other American sports offer similarly easily-grasped beautiful moments: the home run, the circus catch and the web gem in baseball, the dunk and buzzer-beater in basketball. Tennis offers the overhead, the between-the-legs shot and the mad dash for a get. The first is too repetitive and only rarely inspires with athleticism. The second almost never happens aside from pure showmanship. The last is tennis’ most inspiring play and happens fairly frequently but can’t carry the entire sport’s obligation for highlight plays.

Baseball is often similarly boring for the novice, because it too requires a lot of appreciation of subtlety, but it has the advantage of being an American game. I mean this not just because Americans like rooting for Americans (although this is a problem for American tennis, as Andy Roddick, while hilarious, is not quite good enough), but because baseball’s vocabulary has seeped into the national consciousness. We all know that a guy reaching second base isn’t just because he hit a double, and we know that hitting a home run is just generally celebratory. We all know that however funny Woody Allen once was, he might have lost a few MPH on his heater. Oh, and chicks dig the long ball. And so on. The only tennis-related idiom I can recall off of the top of my head is “the ball’s in his court.” How boring is that?

Baseball’s achieved that through long cultivation at home, but also because it’s been mythologized far more. There are a ton of great baseball movies, and so many are acknowledged masterpieces: everyone knows The Natural, Major League, etc., etc. Basketball’s got Hoosiers and He Got Game. Football’s got Rudy. What does tennis have? Wimbledon (a bad romantic comedy) and Match Point (speaking of Woody Allen losing something on his fastball…) It’s not as if tennis lacks for marketable stories. I would imagine Arthur Ashe would make a pretty good movie in the inspirational biopic mode. John McEnroe: The Movie would be low entertainment at the very least (although maybe they’re waiting for him to die).

Because if Americans can enjoy baseball—which they do—they can certainly enjoy tennis, a more exciting sport once the subtleties are grasped. (I like baseball, too.) Too bad.

****

Going from meta- to specific, the doubles match itself was quite good. I wore a Stanford shirt to support the Bryan brothers, who ended up triumphing over Nestor and That Serbian Guy, 6-4, 7-6 (5) (see what I mean about weird vocabulary?). It was a well-played, closed match that featured some precise, whipping shots down the middle by Mike Bryan, and some key soft volleys by Bob Bryan.

This incident is emblematic of why the Bryan bros. won the match. At 5-4, having broken back to avert the set loss, and up 40-15, a long tense rally broke out, featuring the shifting positions (dash up to net—retreat quickly!—dash back!) that makes doubles so exciting. It ended with an apparent winner, with Bob Bryan (I think. To be honest, the fact that they’re twins and wear the same clothes makes any guess perilous) rocketing a ball down the line, apparently brushing the side. But the umpire overruled immediately. I thought it was in, and I was more-or-less in line with the shot. The call struck bros. Bryan as somewhat dubious, and they lined up on the line on their side of the court and stared down it, like a golfer determining the path of a putt. They challenged the call. The screen showed the flight of the ball, and it ended up the slightest of margins out. The crowd applauded appreciatively, Mike applauded and Bob dropped to his knees in mock worship. They aced them the next point.

By contrast, after a critical error to get broken the game before, That Bearded Serbian Dude (although The Bearded One might have been Nestor—honestly I’m not up on my doubles personalities other than bros. Bryan) sent his racquet careening into the crown and got treated to a hearty round of boos from the crowd.

They were just the slightest bit looser and were certainly having more fun, and I think that’s why they won.

****

While I was waiting to pick up my tickets, a fight broke out. Strong words were exchanged, and a bald, barrel-chested, small man pushed back a bearded guy and pointed. They pushed a couple more times and then the bearded guy took a swing at the guy with the shaved head. Shaved Head blocked in a way that you only see in movies and karate instructors, and the fight was on. As it went on, it became progressively more stylized until you realized that this was no fight at all, it was a mere performance. Then the bearded guy cartwheeled to one side, where he was joined by four people. Barrel Chest went with his group, and then they commenced in an acrobatic, gymanstic game of one-upmanship. If one side started with a two-handed handstand on top of the other person’s hands, culminating in being controlledly dropped to the floor perilously close to directly on the head, then the other had to the same but with one hand. Well then the first side had to have the girl go up with one hand but, while in the air, undulate her legs rhythmically to demonstrate her control. And so on, until it stopped. Once it did, everyone else, who had been watching hypnotized, started once again.

****

After the trophy presentation, the same group, which we learned was called “Seven Fingers on A Hand” (in French, of course) performed in the middle of the tennis court, with the same sense of You Got Served competition. The competition was equal parts gymnastics, acrobatics, conceptual music video dancing and showmanship.

My favorite part was when they wheeled out two large, thin black wheels and proceeded to go Vitruvian Man in them, spinning like a top on various axes.

After the Fingers finished, a Taiko group came on. After hearing Stanford’s Taiko group, I’ve become acclimatized to the shock-and-awe performance of Taiko, with its booming tremors, so I was relatively unimpressed with the Taiko group featured with the tennis.

Then came the moment we were all waiting for: when we could officially begin waiting for the match. The lights darkened, save for one brightly fluorescent one above the players’ entrance. A song started on the intercom, with rumbling drums and pulsing strings, that was right out of the stock sports soundtrack music (for the record, it is at the moment of the climatic game where everything shifts into slow motion, and every contortion of the hero’s face can be seen, and it seems like everything might be lost until, at the last moment, it isn’t). Then some showgirls wearing Vegas-style headdresses but otherwise invisible marched in. The supernovae of camera’s flash began blooming in the stands. And then…nothing. The song on the intercom began singing: “Don’t walk away…!”

(I interrupt this essay to note that my computer problem has finally been fixed. I have to change my password from good old ******* to *****, which is ridiculous as I am not an FBI or CIA agent and don’t have sensitive state secrets to protect. I mean, as long as your password isn’t qwerty, your birthday or your name, no one will ever guess your password.)

Anyway, after fifteen minutes or so of waiting, they finally gave boxing-style introductions to our protagonists: David Nalbandian and Rafael Nadal. I consider both to be everymen: Nalbandian wears what appears to be a bowling shirt and is the That Guy of tennis (a That Guy is someone who provokes “Oh, there’s That Guy!” as a response. Other That Guys have included Michael Caine and John C. Reilly.), while it seems that Rafael Nadal wins by effort alone.

Actually I’m not so sure that winning by effort alone would qualify you for everyman status. Of course, Rafael Nadal is blessed with formidable physical gifts: even beyond the obvious bulging biceps, his forehand is a body blow, and his speed is demoralizing. But in comparison to the inhuman perfection of Federer, Nadal seems much more human for his struggles en route to victory. The cliché of “Ain’t over ‘til it’s over” is resurrected for Nadal. We’d all like to flatter ourselves with our self-regard of our resolve, stick-to-itness and hard-working values, but the truth is that these qualities are far rarer than we’d like to admit. The supreme confidence that Nadal has in himself, to come back from a 2-0 set deficit at Wimbledon, for example, is in its way just as transcendent as Federer’s effortless artistry. So I while I tend to think of Nadal as a yeoman player (I don’t think I’m alone, judging by the way commentators react to him), it’s clear that he is superlatively blessed.

Tonight, however, his body failed him while his spirit stayed constant. After eight well-played games, Nadal was broken on his serve. Up to that point, Nadal had, in my opinion, played slightly better—while Nalbandian had racked up an unusual number of return winners and aces, he also had a large number of those “unforced” errors which are a natural consequence of playing Nadal. Even the break was not so bad, as it had came as the end of a tough game. So when Nalbandian held to finish off the set, I expected a close second set. Six games later, the match was over. It was as if, between sets, Nadal exchanged his racquet for a club. He could not make good contact at all. I only see the number of framed shots when I’m playing, not the second best player in the world. But Nadal wasn’t giving up—his movement was still good, and he put together a few decent points, and the two collaborated on two Sportscenter points (including one where Nalbandian wrapped a forehand around the post and down the line [although down the line is mere tennis jargon, this was more-or-less crosscourt]). Nadal’s devolution was mysterious. It was not due to his hard-court troubles, which I thought were present in the first set (too many times, his forehand down the line floated with tospin as a body blow when it should have been whipped down the line for a knockout punch), but was due to an inexplicable ignorance on how to hit the ball: framed balls and balls sent right into the middle of the net. My neighbor became exasperated with the strange incompetence, and I don’t blame him, although I found it more curious than annoying.

That was the strange anticlimax to an otherwise fun day of tennis. A thought flashed through my mind at 4-0, when it was clear that Nadal and the game of tennis had parted ways: “I wonder if he’s hurt.” I just didn’t know.

****

I saw the strangest man on the Metro, a system which features many strange people. There was a strange aura about this guy, although his clothing was unremarkable, as was his face. Maybe it was the way his forehead leaned against the glass, with the rest of his body angled sharply away from the door. But that isn’t much to rest the case on. No, it was when the metro pitched, sending the gathering passengers staggering, that he let out a loud long giggle that only finished when we pulled up to the station. As I left, I wondered, what the hell was up with that?, before I shrugged and figured that some things will always be unexplained.