The 2022 Australian Open had something for everyone

In the wake of the Novak Djokovic controversy, tennis fans were treated to the messiest Australian Open in memory.

It started in a courtroom. As Novak Djokovic was granted a vaccine exception to play by Tennis Australia; and then detained in the Melbourne airport; and then released by a judge and finally deported for good by a panel of adjudicators — major media outlets not usually in the business of covering men’s singles tennis turned their eyes towards Melbourne.

What they found, in the Djokovic story, was a dramatic saga with familiar plotlines. Novak, like many others before him in the past 12 months, served as an easy avatar for our roiling political and cultural discontents. Everyone retreated very quickly to their corners, learning perhaps too much about a capricious Australian bureaucracy.

When Djokovic was deported on the eve of the tournament, a lot of the media circus left town with him. What was left for them — namely, tennis — was not, on first blush, such a simple or familiar story. People who tuned out the men’s singles’ bracket of the Australian Open after its number one seed left, though, made a mistake. After beginning with a weeks-long treatise on proper protocol, the tournament was filled with humanity.

Let’s go over some of the fun we had over the past three weeks at the Australian Open

Australian Nick Kyrgios hit a ball through his legs, not for any kind of court positioning (he was standing on the baseline, it wasn’t a tweener), and then promptly smacked a forehand winner down the line. Kyrgios faced an early exit in the singles’ draw, but won the men’s doubles tournament with fellow Aussie Thanasi Kokkinakis.

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After struggling with, to put it mildly, stomach issues during the first round, eventual semifinal loser Matteo Berrettini scrawled “Imodium Grazie!” on a TV camera lens, thanking the medication for powering him through in four sets.

https://twitter.com/AustralianOpen/status/1482948668768591872

Stefanos Tsitsipas, who also played his way to the semifinals, losing to eventual runner-up Daniil Medvedev, got so locked in that he didn’t realize he had won a match. When asked about it afterwards, he said he was “concentrating on building geometric patterns.”

https://twitter.com/RafalutionXXI/status/1484796181590863874

Medvedev himself was all kinds of fun throughout the tournament. In the quarterfinals, after going down by two sets to Canadian wunderkind Felix Auger-Aliassime (and battling through some incredible points), Medvedev started to imitate Auger-Aliassime’s grunt right back to him. He demurred after the match, with a very funny half-confession, saying, “If I have a new friend and I’ll talk to him a lot, I’ll start to do some phrases like him. I’ll start to sometimes act like him and he’s going to be like, What the hell, man? Why you doing that?” before noting he wasn’t doing it on purpose. In the next round against Tsitsipas, Medvedev told off the umpire for not controlling the crowd, calling him a “small cat.” You do the math on the word he was gesturing towards.

And then finally, in the final of the men’s singles bracket, Medvedev ran into Rafael Nadal. Ten years younger than Nadal, the Russian won the first two sets and looked like the more physical, better player. Nadal went as far down as 0-40, 2-3 in the third set. He saved three break points, went on to win the third set, and then the fourth, and then the fifth. The five-hour, 24-minute match ended 2-6, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 in favor of Nadal.

At 35 years old, coming back from a nagging foot problem that put him on crutches, worrying six weeks ago whether he’d compete at all, sounding positively pessimistic about his chances before the tournament, Rafael Nadal won the Australian Open for the first time since 2009. In doing so, he won his 21st major tournament and moved into the lead for the most majors won by a man all-time, surpassing longtime rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Exciting enough?

Those are some of the more fun narratives and anecdotes from a great tournament. In between those moments, players at the top of their games also played a lot of fun tennis. The people running the tour, along with the American broadcasters who call the games, are obsessed with the records and the narratives. They will likely be pleased with the outcome here, because the eventual champion had a great one. Particularly from the broadcast teams, that ethos comes in large part from the way they understand their audience.

Throughout the final, John McEnroe, a stalwart on ESPN’s calls of the majors, frequently compared Nadal to Tom Brady. Despite McEnroe’s attempts, tennis is never going to be football. The game is different and appeals to different fans, so let’s stop pretending in that direction. Tennis may not draw Super Bowl ratings in America, but it has a lot going for it. To grow the game, its leaders can supplement the major tracker with more serious attention on their numerous young stars, real investigations into the beautiful points they are playing and how tactics are evolving, and engagement with tennis’ ever-growing cultural status.

It was remarkable to watch Rafa fend off age and demons at Rod Laver Arena to capture the major title. But even if right now it feels like at least he and Djokovic will play (or at least make a lot of noise while detained) forever, they will someday retire. By all indications, the people running the sport of men’s tennis view this as an existential threat to their continued success. They should instead see it as an opportunity to tell fresh stories.