How the Djoker went wild at Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia — My knees hurt. My legs are cramping up. It’s 11 p.m. and I need a drink badly. The crowd is yelling in my ears. Do I have the strength left to finish this match? Could I possibly hold out for another set, and probably another one?

And all I’m doing is sitting in the first row at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, watching the Australian Open men’s singles semifinal between defending champion and world number 1 Novak Djokovic and world number 4 Andy Murray. I could easily get up (Well, during the changeover), walk to the Lacoste Lounge outside, and have champagne, oysters and prawns so fresh they leap off the plate, while gawking at the well-tanned celebrities in our midst…

Who am I kidding? No one is going to budge from their precious seats until this epic is over. The quality of the tennis is breathtaking. Djokovic and Murray are hitting the balls with such power and pace that they should rip through the walls, plop in the Yarra River and produce small tsunamis. Somehow the balls stay within the lines, usually landing right on them. Their entire universe is a rectangle on a blue hardcourt 78 feet long and 27 feet wide.

The Djoker: Novak Djokovic serves.

Everything they have trained for their entire lives unfolds within these white lines. What are they thinking in the fifth set, when after so much effort they are dead even with two sets each and two games apiece? I don’t think they have time to think, with the ball whizzing between them, passing centimeters over the net to ding the margins. From where I sit the court looks like the ruled pad paper from primary school.

But I haven’t answered your question: How did I get that excellent seat right above the barrier painted with sponsors’ logos, close enough to the players to get concussed by a stray ace, certainly close enough to get whacked in the face by a sweat-soaked towel or wristband thrown in triumph (I don’t care whose sweat it is, I am not picking it up)?

I am at the Australian Open as a guest of Lacoste, the official clothing sponsor of this tournament (and of Roland Garros), and the de facto uniform not only of preppies but of the Filipino haute bourgeoisie. The crocodile shirt is practically business attire back home. The 78-year-old global lifestyle brand founded by tennis player Rene Lacoste is launching the latest of its Save Your Logo projects: Conserving the Philippine Crocodile.

Save Your Logo is an innovative program that calls on companies that have endangered wildlife species as their logos to contribute to the preservation of these species. Naturally the first brand that comes to mind is Lacoste with its iconic crocodile logo. That logo came about when the captain of the French Davis Cup team promised Rene Lacoste an alligator suitcase if he won a vital match. This was reported by an American sportswriter who then nicknamed Rene for his tenacity on court — once he got his teeth into an opponent, he never let go.

Rene Lacoste liked his nickname so much he had a crocodile embroidered on his blazer. This was in the 1920s, when tennis players wore long-sleeved starched shirts and trousers on court, and no one wore a logo on his clothes unless he was a factory employee. Later, Rene designed a batch of short-sleeved Jersey cotton pique shirts with the crocodile logo for his personal use. The other players admired the comfort and efficiency of these shirts, and asked Lacoste to make shirts for them, too. Thus Lacoste invented not just the idea of branding apparel with a logo, but the concept of sports marketing as well.

Incidentally the actor Adrien Brody bears a biopic-ready resemblance to Rene Lacoste, so it makes perfect sense that Lacoste has signed him to be their first celebrity endorser. Brody’s Unconventional Chic Lacoste Man campaign will be launched in the spring. 

Since 2009 Lacoste’s Save Your Logo program has helped safeguard endangered crocodile species by giving financial support to conservation groups in different countries. In the Philippines the Crocodile brand will support the Mabuwaya Foundation, which works to preserve the existence of the Philippine crocodile in the wild. (By the way, Lolong is not a Philippine crocodile but an Australian species that swam over to this archipelago eons ago.)

Of course Lacoste is an ardent supporter of tennis, and Australia has both crocodiles and the Australian Open. Don’t forget the great Aussie tennis player Rod Laver, still the only man to have won all the four major titles in the same year and to have done this twice. Laver is the man Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer are chasing.

I should be despondent because I thought I’d get to Melbourne in time for the semifinal between Federer and Nadal. The pilot announced the result of that match as we were landing. While I’m disappointed at having missed out on seeing the arch-nemeses do battle, I was relieved that I didn’t have to watch The Fed lose to Nadal again. Federer fans are all too familiar with the feeling of dread that falls over them as a Federer-Nadal match approaches. The catastrophe (the frequency does not make it less catastrophic) over, I could actually enjoy the tennis. 

The things we used to loathe about Novak Djokovic — the worst of these his habit of quitting matches he was losing by citing one illness or another — are the very things he’s shucked off on his way to being the undisputed number one. The Djoker (He does impressions of his fellow players, notably Nadal, who was not amused; he put on a wig and a dress to parody Maria Sharapova) won three of the slams last year to seal his top ranking. Pundits attribute his victory to a gluten-free diet, but the more obvious change is in his attitude. His old breathing problem recurs in this match and he brings out the nasal spray, but the problem goes away when he regains the lead.

Djokovic overcomes fierce resistance from Murray, a talented player who’s fallen short on the big stages (maintaining Britain’s disappointment at their long drought in slams). Murray gets a lot of bad press for under-performing in tournaments, but there’s no way this 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(4), 1-6, 5-7 is an under-performance. The Scot fights ferociously, clawing back from the brink over and over again. Exhausted and out of it in the fourth set, he finds the energy in the last set to make Djokovic earn each point. 

But while Murray seems to be throwing everything he has at Djokovic, the Serb elevates his game. The Djoker has amazing balance — he can produce winners from the most awkward positions, with his torso going one way, his legs another, his body ready to fly apart. He’s lost a lot of weight; he looks like a long distance runner with massive pecs. When he makes that forehand his arm whips through the ball and keeps going across his face till you half-expect it to curl cartoonishly around his head.

When he’s receiving he bends low with his knees far apart, his butt sticking out, his upper body moving from side to side. There’s something rubbery about him, a bit like Jim Carrey in The Mask, and though he is attractive there’s a plucked chicken aspect to him. When Djokovic mops the sweat off his face with his wristband he looks like a cat grooming himself.

Not once do I recall him approaching the net. Four hours, fifty minutes later, his place in the finals secured, he apologizes to Rod Laver for not serving-and-volleying. His reward for tonight’s hard labor is a clash with Nadal. That is another epic.

Sitting in the front row at 10 p.m., with birds cawing and wheeling over the open roof and the occasional feather (but no bird poop tonight) floating down to the court and crickets chirping loudly over the squeak of the players’ soles, enjoying the cool breeze after a hot summer day, watching two players in their prime trade booming groundstrokes in rallies that never seem to end — for a tennis fan, this is happiness.

(Coming next: Watching crocodiles)

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Twisted by Jessica Zafra. Pumping irony since 1994.