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Weakness for genius
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Many Indian sportspersons promise their fans great things, but fail to deliver. And this is attributed to `the lack of a killer instinct'. ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN has a different explanation.
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Ivan Lendl had an obsessive work ethic
THE claims in my earlier piece "Who is the Second Best", (The Hindu Sunday Magazine June 29, 2003) were not incontrovertible. After all, the roster of overlooked contenders was formidable: Trabert, Hoad, Rosewall, Connors, and McEnroe. But I could have wagered a handsome sum that fans in India, probably more so than elsewhere, would have accused me in particular of one sin of omission — John McEnroe — and, as revealingly, excused me of another — Ivan Lendl. And so it was. "Why not McEnroe?" screamed the vast majority of responses, with very few taking up on behalf of Lendl. Why is so and what does it signify? Perhaps, there is even a theory lurking here that is generally applicable to all Indian sport.
Of all the players in recent tennis history, few have been as different as McEnroe and Lendl. John McEnroe exemplified pure genius, was stylistically an iconoclast and famously derisive about the virtues of practice. In direct contrast, Lendl was not as well endowed with talent, but attained a technical fluency worthy of a coaching manual thanks to his manically obsessive work ethic. Their contrasting styles of play mirrored these attributes.
McEnroe possessed a great serve and was a sorcerer at the net — his volleying as exquisite as it was deviant. McEnroe's racket head would hang; apparently limp, well below the wrist, in violation of the canons of tennis orthodoxy, only to perk up with prestidigitatory power, when he caught the ball on the full. McEnroe was also a serve and volleyer unlike other great practitioners such as Sampras. Tennis for McEnroe was either about being at the net or getting there at the earliest opportunity, the baseline being terrain to get away from rather than inhabit. Lingering there to trade groundstrokes, which Sampras would occasionally engage in and even enjoy, was not for McEnroe.
Lendl was the classic baseliner, nearly as great as Borg, able to blast away from both flanks with a long elaborate wind-up. To him should go the credit of taking the game of tennis up a notch: the single-handed backhand ground stroke which until then served more to keep the ball in play was converted into a full-fledged offensive weapon on par with the forehand by Lendl. To watch him coil — the turn of the hips and shoulders to get perpendicular to the oncoming ball, the knees bent, the racket extended back — and then explode into the stroke with all body parts in synchronised harmony was one of the great treats of tennis from a technical perspective. But he was utterly inept at the net, and consequently so uncomfortable on grass that in the early years of his career he skipped the obligatory trip to Wimbledon. The ineptness comprised both the inability to volley but also the clumsy odyssey toward the net, the latter somewhat incomprehensible for a player of such good mobility along the baseline.
Ramesh Krishnan touched by genius.
Both attained great successes. McEnroe accumulated seven major championships to Lendl's eight. Less noticed is a remarkable statistic: Lendl actually reached 19 major finals compared to McEnroe's 11. There was symmetry to their successes. McEnroe won three Wimbledon titles to Lendl's three on the clay of Roland Garros. And on the more neutral surface at Flushing Meadow, McEnroe had four titles to Lendl's three, which was achieved in the course of eight consecutive final appearances. McEnroe never won at Roland Garros although he reached the final once and basically self-destructed his way to a loss to Lendl after being up two sets to love.
Lendl never won Wimbledon. But in one of the more heroic efforts in tennis history, he set about — with characteristic assiduousness and determination — trying to acquire a grass-court game in order to win it. Lendl astutely recognised that he could not emulate Borg's strategy of winning Wimbledon playing a clay court game. Lacking Borg's quickness, and realising that his preparation for the groundstrokes would be fatally elaborate on grass, he had to acquire at least a modicum of comfort at the net. To this end, he hired Tony Roche who tutored him in the basics of grass court tennis. That he was unsuccessful does not detract from the impressiveness of the mental and physical effort that he expended in refashioning his game and becoming good enough to reach the finals twice.
Whose achievements were greater — McEnroe's or Lendl's? Objectively, the evidence leans toward Lendl, especially if account is taken of the astounding 19 final appearances, including eight consecutive ones at the U.S. Open. At the least, it is too close to call. But, the vast majority of discerning Indian fans plump, and without hesitation, for McEnroe. Why?
One aspect of this revealed preference of the Indian tennis fans could simply be aesthetic. The serve and volley game is intrinsically more beautiful to watch. But I would argue that there is another facet of our preference for McEnroe that is less benign and more costly in its consequence, which merits serious examination. Genius exerts a particular fascination for us Indians. We are in thrall to it. We exalt effortless brilliance, we celebrate talent and the achievement that comes easily, naturally. But in celebrating genius we willy-nilly undervalue, even devalue, the importance of effort, and with serious consequences.
McEnroe
Let me elaborate, using Indian tennis as an example. Consider our illustrious trinity — Ramanathan and Ramesh Krishnan and Vijay Amritraj. For success-starved Indian fans, they gave us glimpses of greatness, led us tantalisingly close to what seemed to be the unattainable precincts of excellence. But, in the final analysis, they fell short of the pinnacle, and, in the case of Vijay and Ramesh, substantially so. Their successes were too few, too intermittent for us to acquire the conviction that we really did belong in the top league. In some way, we the fans were complicit in this failure because we consoled ourselves too easily. We obsessively dwelt on the grace of Vijay and the touch and artistry of the Krishnans without focussing on their failures and their causes. We were insufficiently critical and failed to draw the obvious inferences.
In the case of Vijay Amritraj, the consolation took the form of attributing the lack of a "killer instinct" to his inability to convert his great promise and talent into consistent top-level performance. It is glib and empty rationalising, which taken literally would imply that nastiness is a prerequisite for success. It is also annoying how this explanation subtly manages to convert a real failing for which responsibility must be taken into a virtue. It's not his fault; he is just such a nice guy. That failing is just the flip side of Lendl's keys to success. Vijay Amritraj, wonderful as he was as a tennis player, simply did not invest adequately in becoming fit and tough enough to be able to play great tennis day in and day out. Invoking exogenous killer instinct, or rather the lack thereof, is simple responsibility avoidance for not having put in the effort to becoming fit and tough.
The Krishnans, too, paid the price for evading the effort that goes into acquiring athleticism and fitness. Perhaps Krishnan senior's ponderous waddle on the court could be excused. He was unfit but not outrageously outside the prevailing standards of his day. Ramesh's impeded mobility and poor physical conditioning were exceptional. But just as with Vijay, the deficiencies were rectifiable. We were not sufficiently severe on Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan during their playing years and, more astonishingly, are not so, even retrospectively. We were too transfixed by their genius, touch, whatever — which they undoubtedly possessed in great measure — to step back and diagnose that their talent could, with effort, have been translated into excellence and achievement at the highest level.
Especially in these ultra-competitive times, genius alone is insufficient to scale the peaks in most walks of life, particularly sport. The daily regimen of the top tennis players attests to that. So when we elevate endowment over effort, gift over graft, talent over toil, let us be clear about the consequences: we may well get our Amritrajs and Krishnans — never mind that they too are getting few and far between — but we will never get a Lendl, the great unsung hero of modern tennis, that paragon of making so much out of not-so-much.
The writer is a non-resident fellow of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Governance.
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