(Opinion) The late first-century Roman poet Juvenal is believed to have coined the exhortation ‘bread and circuses’ which provided a palliative distraction for the common people from the more serious events in the empire.
Friday night’s extraordinary third-round US Open tennis match between Serena Williams, perhaps the greatest player of modern times, and Ajla Tomljanović, an elegant Croatian-Australian ranked 38th in the world may well have been our ‘circus’, totally taking our minds off the world’s troubles.
Happily, sports can do that for us. Watching a great sporting event gives us the chance to put everything else out of our minds and emotionally participate in the action. It’s OK to scream cheers and to leap to our feet in excitement.
There wasn’t an empty seat in Arthur Ashe Stadium where 24,000 fans were gathered to cheer on their beloved Serena Williams, the sensational player who in many ways had injected a new strength into the sport.
Television audiences around the world turned in to see her matches were reported to be up 279% to over 3 million.
I had to feel a bit sorry for Tomljanović who must have been totally lonely on the court.
Here she was playing against her idol in what could be William’s last Grand Slam match, with the entire stadium applauding every William’s winner and every losing shot of Tomljanović’s that went into the net or outside the lines.
The three-set match spanned more than three hours, far longer than the usual woman’s singles with the advantage going back and forth between Williams and Tomljanović who was only six years old when Williams won the US Open on the same court in 1999.
When Williams was good, she was very, very good, in fact still great. She could murder a lob and race to the net to return a drop shot.
But watching her resist going after Tomljanović’s long drives to the baseline, shots she might have devoured in her younger days, showed the effect of the eleven-year age difference.
Serena could be and often was spectacular, demonstrating, again and again, her power and fight. But one couldn’t help but see how it was becoming more difficult as hard-fought games took longer and longer to win or, to see go to the steady Tomljanović.
It has never been within Serena’s temperament to give up. Having lost the first set, she came back and won the second on a tiebreak.
Every fan wanted to know if she could win the third, wishing for the magic she had displayed so many times to keep her in the tournament.
Serena Williams effectively ended her astonishing career when she lost the third set 6-1.
She walked to center court to acknowledge the standing ovation and, when unexpectedly presented with a microphone for an exit interview, an honor not usually afforded the loser in a match, with tears she said: “Everyone that’s here, that’s been on my side, for so many years, decades…These are happy tears, I guess. I don’t know… It’s been a fun ride. It’s been the most incredible ride and journey I’ve ever been on.”
The winner, Ajla Tomljanović sat quietly and unobtrusively on the sidelines, out of the limelight, not wishing to take anything away from Williams.
It was a class act of incredible sportsmanship for a player who was jeered during the match by Williams’ fans, a lesson that will not be easily forgotten.
When she finally spoke to the stadium crowd of crest-fallen Williams fans, she said simply: “I’m feeling real sorry just because I love Serena just as much as you guys do. What she’s done for me, for the sport of tennis, is incredible. She’s the greatest of all time. Period.”
In a singularly elegant and sincere moment, she left the court to the sustained applause of what are most likely to be her new fans now.
Juvenal, who had contemptuously attacked bread and circuses as undermining active citizenship would, no doubt, have made an exception to this ‘circus’ and joined the applause.