Free Refills

So what’s happened in the first round so far:

Sharapova beat Halep 6-4, 4-6, 6-3. The tennis writers I follow on Twitter said it had all the quality and intensity of a final. I was on the road and so haven’t seen it yet, but today’s rainouts have opened up some time.

Related: a question I’ve been interested in and hope to explore in some writing this week: when is it worth watching a sporting event if you already know the outcomes?

I said Jo Konta was capable of beating anyone in the field. She lost.

I declared Jack Sock as worth mentioning when I discussed the players with a shot of coming out of the bottom half of the draw. He lost.

Headline writers are calling Naomi Osaka’s win over Kerber an upset. To which I respond: please. Kerber is a shell of herself. She got blown off the court.

If she’s wise, she’ll take the rest of the season off. I have no idea if there’s anything clearly measurable about how differently she’s playing this year compared to last, that is, if modern advanced statistical techniques would demonstrate what’s changed, but it’s clear that a) she’s mentally barely present and b) hasn’t quite accepted just how burned out she really is. Maybe the humiliation of going from defending champ to first-round loser might open her eyes.

The Men

After a season that started like a dream, one of the greatest seasons the game has ever seen–Federer vs. Nadal in the Australian Open final, then Federer’s swing through the North American hard-court spring, then Nadal’s clay-court season, then Federer’s season on grass–we’ve seen things kind of fall apart in the weeks since Wimbledon. The rash of injuries at the top of the game have taken a lot of the shine out of the Open. Djokovic shut his season down after Wimbledon, citing a wrist injury. Wawrinka had surgery on his knee and is out. Nishikori is out with a wrist injury. Raonic is out with a wrist injury. And yesterday, Murray pulled out, his troublesome kip finally being too much to deal with. That’s a gaping set of holes in the draw.

All of this might be swept under the rug if Federer and Nadal are healthy and go deep. But Federer’s back injury in the final of Montreal is worrisome. Injuries in the core being very hard to heal, how likely is Federer to get through seven matches of best-of-five tennis in New York’s summertime heat without a recurrence? That’s a lot to ask of the body if it isn’t truly 100% going in.

So can we at least rely on Nadal? Hard to say. It’s deep in the season now, and Nadal has a lot of tennis in his body for the year. But when it comes to best-of-five on slower courts, it’s hard to put Nadal behind anybody except perhaps top-of-their-games Djokovic and Murray–neither of whom is playing.

With Federer and Nadal on the same side of the draw, thus dashing the marketers’ and many fans dreams of a Federer-Nadal final, that means that someone besides one of them is going to make the final. Most of the players whom I’d consider top contenders are in the Nadal-Federer half of the draw. So who looks possible to make a deep run in the bottom half? Cilic, the five-seed, has been struggling with injury. Tsonga, seeded eighth, could make a run. Jack Sock, the 13-seed, has played some very good tennis this year. But no one in that half of the draw has played with anything like the fire of Sasha Zverev.

Last year during my trip to the Open, I watched both of Sasha’s matches. He put on a rather petulant performance against Daniel Brands on his way to a four-set win, and then lost in four to Dan Evans in the second round. Sasha has matured greatly since then and has become different caliber player. He’s yet to have his breakthrough in best-of-five and, at 20 years old, is clearly still improving. But he was furiously good in Washington and Montreal earlier this month, before the accumulated fatigue overwhelmed him Cincinnati. He’s demonstrated that he can beat the best–he was outplaying Federer in Montreal even before Federer’s injury. The pressure on him is very great, but it would be wonderful to see him make the most of this opportunity.

(As an aside, the Zverev-Evans match was the most memorable match of my trip last year. They played late into the night on tiny, tiny Court 4. It’s safe to bet that Sasha won’t be playing on Court 4 this year.)

The Women

If the men’s draw is more open than usual because of all the players missing with injury, the women’s draw is open because that’s how the women’s game is when Serena isn’t around.

Here are the top nine seeds on the women’s side:

1. Pliskova
2. Halep
3. Muguruza
4. Svitolina
5. Wozniacki
6. Kerber
7. Konta
8. Kuznetsova
9. V. Williams

Let’s go ahead and presume that we’re not going to see a particularly deep run from reigning champ Angelique Kerber. She’s been a shell of the player we saw win two majors last season. With no wins against anyone in the top twenty all season, there’s every reason to think she’ll make an early exit here.

With her out of the way, let’s discuss the remaining eight in the top nine, and a few others besides.

Simona Halep, still just 25 years old, has seemed since her break-up and subsequent reconciliation with coach Darren Cahill back in the spring, like she’s poised for a breakthrough–and then she gets in her head and falls apart. She really struggles to close–in important matches, and in important tournaments. That she lost one-and-love to Mugu in Cincinnati suggests, again, that she isn’t quite ready to make the leap in her mental/emotional game to show up at her very best for the biggest matches.

She drew the single most interesting match, men’s or women’s, for her first-round match: she’ll be playing Maria Sharapova. It’s entirely possible that Halep won’t even make the second round, much less make a deep run. On the other hand, a strong performance against Maria could give her some useful momentum after what happened in Cincinnati.

Number-one seed Karolina Pliskova was a finalist here last year and has been consistent but not overwhelming throughout the year. On the other hand, she holds the top seed without having even made a final in a Slam this year. She’s a strong player, and would surely love to make a deep run here, but it’s hard to look at her as the favorite.

So who is? Surely it is Muguruza who has taken over that role. It’s a bit surprising to say that, after where she was just a few short months ago at Roland Garros, when she melted down under the pressure and looked like she simply didn’t have the tools right now to be a serious contender for another major. But then she won Wimbledon, made the semis (losing to Madison Keys) at Stanford, made the quarters in Toronto (losing to Svitolina), then in Cincinnati beat Keys, Kuznetsova, and Pliskova on her way to the final, before demolishing Halep to take the title. Her losses have come against good players, and her wins have been very strong. She’s looking like she finally decided to shoulder the burden of being a top player. In her current form, she has to be seen as the favorite here.

Elina Svitolina still feels like something of a wild card (in the colloquial rather than tennis sense). Her play has been pretty consistent all season. She’s only 22 years old. She won in Rome and Toronto this year, showing that she’s competitive up to the highest levels of the sport–but she’s never made it beyond the third round at the US Open. Will this be the year in which she goes deeper?

Wozniacki has been strong but not amazing this season. She plays some matches like she’s on her way back to championship caliber, but then there are matches like the final of the Rogers Cup in Toronto against Svitolina, when she fought gamely through most of the first set, lost it, and then simply got demolished in the second. Based on her consistent inconsistency, it seems unlikely that she’s going to be able to string together the seven solid matches it takes to hoist the trophy in New York.

Jo Konta, the number-seven seed, is an interesting case. She’s become a solid player, capable of beating anybody playing. Her power makes her impossible to write off.

Kuznetsova has been rather under the radar. She made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, the 2nd round at Toronto, and the quarterfinals in Cincinnati. She’s too good to ignore, but hard to take seriously as an actual contender.

And then there’s Venus Williams. She’s 37 years old now. She made the finals at both the Australian and Wimbledon. She’s too good and too experienced to ignore as a possible contender here. On the other hand, she’s at her best on faster courts than we’re likely to see in New York (though we’ll see if that proves true–no one expected the Australian to play quite as fast as it did), and in each of her Slam finals this year, she showed that she doesn’t quite maintain her mental game at its highest in every match, especially the toughest matches. I shouldn’t have been surprised by her lack of presence against Serena in the Australian final–we’ve seen enough times that she doesn’t like playing her sister that it should have been expected–but her utter capitulation against Mugu in the final of Wimbledon still completely baffles me. She’s classy as hell though, and it would be profoundly cool to see her make another deep run in New York.

Other players to watch: Madison Keys, certainly. Jelena Ostapenpo, who still has me shaking my head and smiling over her play on her way to her victory at Roland Garros. CoCo Vandeweghe. Petra Kvitova, still on the comeback trail. And, as we saw at Roland Garros, there’s plenty of reason to think that any other number of players–maybe anyone in the top fifty?–could make a serious run here.

Gotta be excited for this one. Expect a fun tournament. Oh, and there are eight players with a chance to hold world-number-one after the Open: everyone in the top nine except for Kerber. Here’s a fascinating little wrinkle: if the final ends up being the one and two seeds, Halep and Pliskova, and Pliskova ends up winning, Halep still leaves the Open as the new number one. Rolling rankings can create some interesting occurrences, eh?

Last night at 11:50pm, I briefly excused myself from the best bar in Milwaukee in order to connect to WiFi and publish yesterday’s piece.

I’ve done this practice too long to simply let it slide. But as I did, I did take a moment to ask myself why. Just habit? Why couldn’t it wait until morning?

This morning, I awoke to the answer. The heart of the practice isn’t publishing. What I’m really practicing is professionalism. Even when I’m not getting paid, I’m ingraining the habits of a professional. Writing is my job. I show up, no matter what.

A question: can the commonplace be miraculous?

Here’s what I mean. Tuesday morning, I awoke in a tent in rural Wyoming. We drove across more than a thousand miles of country, and that night I craned my neck upwards to take in the marvels of the architecture of the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago.

On the one hand, it’s just a math problem: average 70 m.p.h. over fifteen hours of driving, and you trade Wyoming’s Black Hills National Forest for the shores of Lake Michigan. Simple enough.

But on the other hand. I woke up in a tent in rural Wyoming. I went to sleep in a bed on the 30th floor of a hotel surrounded by the lights of the city. The sun rose, the sun set, and everything was different.

To put it another way: if I don’t see the world with constant wonder, am I genuinely seeing it?

Witnessing a total solar eclipse was not like a miracle. It was an actual miracle. It was without exaggeration the most amazing thing I have ever seen. It was like staring into the eye of God.

If the last several days have gone as planned, I have driven up north from Colorado into northern Wyoming, camped for a couple of days, driven back south into the path of eclipse totality, witnessed a total eclipse for the first time in my life, then headed into South Dakota, a state I’ve never been to before, to spend the night and reflect on my adventures.

As I write this (several days ahead of time), I’m deeply excited. There’s a way that the world has been new to me this summer. I am excited to take that newness to new places.

Today the moon will pass between the Earth and the sun. A huge swath of the United States will fall into darkness.

Tell me again that the world is not animist. Nor capable, furthermore, of rather heavy-handed symbolism.

The events that began Saturday in Charlottesville and have continued ever since have left me shaken and more than a little exhausted. But I feel a need to respond.

Yesterday I began an essay with this seed:

It feels like the world is coming apart.

Am I alone in this? I do not think I am alone in this.

I’m aiming to have this piece finished by next Friday. It’ll be the most substantial piece I’ve written in a long, long time.

The risk I’m taking, though, is that with the rapidity with which things are developing, anything I’m starting this week may be totally obsolete by next. I don’t know anything to do about that but keep plugging away, but it certainly speaks to what fraught times we find ourselves living in.

If I succeed in doing with FR what I have long envisioned–that it be the home base for my entire career–then if we fast-forward to ten years from now, I expect I’ll look back and see that some of the angst I was feeling about this project during this initial period was misguided. Sure, I didn’t know where I was going. But I kept moving forward until the destination started to come into focus, and then I did the work to move myself toward that destination. From the perspective of ten years from now, I bet this movement from unknown to known is going to look pretty inevitable. “Oh yeah,” I’ll say. “I just kept working until I got there.” But I won’t recall just how uncertain the whole thing felt to me at the time (and, I assume, looked and read to those of you who are here now).

So I thought it might be entertaining to remind myself. Though guessing what technology we’ll be using ten years from now is a fraught exercise at best, I decided to assume that in ten years I’ll still be using Google Calendar, so I opened up August, 2027, and made an appointment for myself on the 17th of that month to go back and read the pieces I put up here this week. When that finally happens, I promise I’ll write a Refill about it. So go ahead and make an appointment to check back here ten years from now as well.

Two and a half years feels like a long time when you’re at the end of it, but I suspect that eight or ten or twelve years from now, when I look back at this period–what I have already, since Monday, come to think of as the exploratory initial period of Free Refills–that it took two and a half years to figure out how to move past the introductory stage will seem a pretty reasonable amount of time, nothing out of the ordinary at all.