Reclaiming Joy
Last week Arthur Ashe Stadium got baptized by the fountain of youth. New York City’s Grand Slam Event has provided, for over 50 years, a platform for a lengthy list of classic rivalry match-ups—heavyweight battles like Sampras-Agassi, Evert-Navratilova, and McEnroe-Conners-- just to name a few. Wimbledon’s antithesis has birthed iconic moments that have framed the sport of professional tennis on both the men’s and women’s sides. However, in the weeks leading up to this year’s Open, there wasn’t much of a buzz.
So many of the game’s stars would be sitting this one out. New York would boast no Serena, no Venus, no Nadal, no Fed. Novak Djokovic offered a potentially historic storyline as he entered the tournament with the chance of achieving the elusive Grand Slam, a feat only one man in the Open Era has ever been able to claim, but other than that, the 2021 US Open felt like an impending yawn.
But then it began. And it did what sport does.
With the doors wide open and the canvas clean, the power of the human spirit re-painted the city with the unique hijinks that come to fruition when hope puts on a jersey or grips a racket or tosses a ball. As spectators, we watched and we grew grateful. And felt capable. And more and more alive. “Ah yes!,” we were reminded. THIS is why we play.
With the doors wide open and the canvas clean, the power of the human spirit re-painted the city with the unique hijinks that come to fruition when hope puts on a jersey or grips a racket or tosses a ball.
The most fun I ever had playing basketball was at the YMCA in Ardmore where our team played summer league when I was in high school. I was fortunate to be able to play in state and national tournaments, and in front of standing room only crowds as a part of intense small college rivalries (the kind that never disappoint.) But nothing was ever better than playing basketball in front of nobody in July at the Y. Two giant double doors separated the gym from the swimming pool with the only ventilation being two sets of metal slat windows at the top of the northwest wall. Needless to say, the air inside was brutal, every bit as heavy as it was hot. Looking back, I think the fact that we all turned liquid the minute we walked in was half the fun. The air smelled like chlorine, nobody had a locker room ,and we didn’t get in lines and move in choreographed patterns to warm up before the game. I’d just walk in with my car keys, sit down on the bench to lace up my high tops and we’d take the floor and play. College guys refereed the games and random people kept the clock. I think they tallied the score and recorded the outcomes on poster board in the hallway, but I really can’t remember. All that’s vivid is the joy.
I think that’s why I can’t get over this year’s Open. It was like an old school homecoming for me with my chlorinated gym. A re-reckoning of competitive joy.
Emma Radacanu and Leylah Fernandez danced into New York City’s tennis spotlight scooping up me- and the world along with me --to sit in the palm of their hands. The two uber talented teens made history at the 2021 Open, with Radacanu becoming the first qualifier—male or female-- ever to win the title. So much about their respective runs to get to that moment and that stage were improbable and unprecedented and breathtaking. A lot like their two games. But all I could think about as I watched them was their untouchable joy.
As the two faced off in the final, Arthur Ashe stadium felt like water at 211 degrees. But it didn’t threaten to bubble with vengeance or even player preference, it just sort of bounced around like a kid on Christmas morning, waiting for mom and dad to get out of bed. Everything about it felt happy. Even through the tv screen. I found myself, like so many in attendance, point after point simply cheering for no one, but applauding the level of tennis, in awe of the fight and the technical brilliance of two young athletes having a blast while running around a court with lines and a net, chasing a neon ball. It was everything and anything that’s good about the game.
Then, with Radacanu up at 5-3 and serving for match, Fernandez earned break back at 30-40, with her lioness roar of refusal to lose that we’d seen throughout the week. She might be going, but she would not be going quietly. I loved her in my bones.
But next came the moment that captured my heart. Just as New York was on the verge of losing her mind came Radacanu’s slide, and the bloody knee, and the medical time out, and the momentum breaker that might have changed the game. But I couldn’t care less about any of all that. What is burned indelibly in my brain is Leylah Fernandez on the baseline, unable to stop her smile. Radacanu was being attended to. New York was going crazy. And in the middle of all the hubbub was quintessential Churchill stretching across the Canadian’s face—an irresistible, grinning fighter who could not hide her joy.
Yes, the moment faded to frustration for Fernandez, and yes, Radacanu returned to win the ensuing point and the match. But it would be tragic to miss the purity of the moment before winning and losing got so much in the way. In the end, someone scores and someone doesn’t. Someone smiles and someone cries. But the true beauty of the battle was the rope of joy that floored both of these competitors in their countenance and in their play. Good and bad and wins and losses are byproducts of earthly living, but they have little to do with joy. Never has that been so evident as it was on this grand stage.
Losing is awful. When you have emptied all you have in you, it hurts in places you didn’t know were there. But even that can’t touch pure joy. Because joy doesn’t seep out the back door when the other guy has more points than you. Joy is something you can only lose when you forget where to look for it.
People said of the two burgeoning tennis stars, “Of course they played unencumbered, they’re young and new on the scene and they have no way of knowing, yet, all the things that they do not know.” True. The albatross that ultimately strangled Djokovic hasn’t arrived yet at their door. No cloak of expectation was draped across their shoulders in New York. The talented teens were allowed to be big stage newbies with nothing but an upside on their plate. The trick is being able to keep that when the world keeps asking you to carry things.
No cloak of expectation was draped across their shoulders in New York. The talented teens were allowed to be big stage newbies with nothing but an upside on their plate
Will Radacanu and Fernandez get to the Djokovic place? Maybe. Probably. If they continue to win and win and win. It’s just so hard to not let that albatross become a part of your skin. But we hope they can evade it. We could use their kind of fighting that splatters us with joy.
Emma and Leylah got to duke it out in first time innocence. Their teenage conduits to joy were still wide open, no corroding build up had yet gathered to shrink the arterial size. And while it’s hard, it’s not impossible for them to keep competing in this state. It will, however, take a lot of intentional work. Maybe constant work is a better way of stating it-- a daily check in with the diligence a pilot has before he flies. Staying joy bound will require the same relentless dedication they show to their forehand or their volley or their serve.
The weight of expectation can get so heavy that losing and even winning can ultimately only bring relief. What a natural reaction when you can’t get to the source that fuels your play. “I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, WHERE? Down in my heart! WHERE? Down in my heart!” goes the jingle we used to sing at Vacation Bible School, ”…down in my heart to stay.”
The external garb of the song was jubilance, the dance in the street kind. Whoever wrote it no doubt knew how easy of a thing it might be to misplace when we got busy living and the world got in the way. But the overriding undertow wasn’t the surface dance, it was the deep abiding peace that’s anchored in marrow, on the inside, in the places the world can’t see. The kind that’s rooted in a prize they cannot hand you and tangled up in muscles whose strength will never go away.
Emma and Leylah turned this year’s Open upside down. They did a number on my heart strings, too. I’m grateful to them for being a reminder that joy is always a choice. And it’s always ours to reclaim.
Sherri Coale
P.S. Special thanks to Rusty Tugman for the sermon series from which I thieved the title of this week’s blog. We cannot be reminded enough.