Remembering Through a Screen
I’m in the Kowloon Taproom watching Aryna Sabalenka play Qinwen Zheng in the French Open quarterfinals. When I was young, the tennis was always on of a summer night. With the lights off, our small CRT would tint the walls and furniture green, the colour of the Flinders Park courts. Edberg. Lendl. Graf. Sánchez Vicario. A litany of summers. Cicada drone outside. The hum of the evaporative cooler inside.
I catalogued the quirks and habits of athletes like they were clues. The copious amount of sweat Pete Sampras produced, which he’d ritualistically wipe from his forehead with his thumb before serving. Agassi’s strut. The way Boris Becker blew on his fingertips before returning serve, a tic I gave extra significance to because his nickname was ‘Boom Boom’ Becker. Surely the two things were linked.
I remember asking my mum why players would spit on the court and why Lendl didn’t. She said it was because Lendl was a gentleman. Even now, whenever I hear the word ‘gentleman’, I picture Ivan Lendl. I twin these memories with others from the period: running through sprinklers on the lawn at night, swimming in our wading pool, which sat under the silky oak and would gradually fill with leaf litter and flowerlike matter, small pieces of flotsam sticking to your skin as you splashed around.
In the present, Sabalenka and Zheng play with a kind of precision I didn’t expect from power hitters. Baseline forehands tear through the air, delicate drop shots clear the net by centimetres. The artistry and placement of their sliced backhands are captured in slow motion and played back on two large flatscreen televisions mounted on the Taproom’s walls. I’m seated at a small table, on my second beer, passing the time until my partner finishes work. My stomach rumbles, running on its own clock. While I take another sip, Sabalenka wins the first set via a Zheng error. The man at the table in front of me applauds loudly and looks around to no one in particular. He sees me and nods. I offer a nod in return. Satisfied, he finishes the rest of his drink before heading out into the rain, which has been steadily coming down all afternoon.
Outside, under a plastic poncho, a cleaner scrubs the footpath with a concoction of chlorine and bleach, creating an aroma reminiscent of a municipal pool. The rain and the chlorine make me think of swimming. Inside, Sabalenka breaks Zheng’s serve and wins in straight sets.
The problem with the flatscreen is that it renders the world too clearly. Too vibrantly. The edges are too harsh. The Luddite in me misses the CRT’s fuzziness and the way it would invite static when the antenna on our old roof shifted in the Melbourne wind.
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