MELBOURNE, Australia – For almost the past two decades, the analytical crowd has propagated the idea that sports are essentially mathematical, that what unfolds on the playing field is predictable and intelligible if viewed through an appropriate algorithm. Occasionally, this crowd was even right. And in many ways, the pandemic sports environment was an analytics fan’s dream, a chance for games to unfold in a laboratory, without the noise, literal and figurative, that can turn an expected result into a beautiful mess.
Now, almost a year after the coronavirus pandemic began, we really know that the roar of the crowd is as vital to sports as a ball or a net. The artificial crowd noise that Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and the NHL transmitted, both to those in stadiums and arenas and to those watching at home, is a terrible facsimile that makes games without viewers don’t look like sports at all. What stage actors call the “fourth wall” – the metaphorical barrier between performers and spectators – does not exist in sports. The passion of a crowd can apparently help with recovery. Your scorn can also suffocate.
For five glorious days at the 2021 Australian Open, I was able to experience that noise again, because government officials allowed up to 30,000 fans, about 50% of the capacity, to attend the tournament every day. It was a joy and a revelation to rediscover the power of what quantum physicists call the “observer effect” – the fact that any observation, however passive, alters a result – even in a crowd of half-capacity tennis fans. Sports looked like sports again.
Then, on Friday, the coronavirus did what it has done relentlessly for the past 11 months: it ended the party. A recent outbreak was what much of the world would consider a nuisance. But in Australia, which managed the pandemic more effectively than any other major economy, it qualified as a critical mass.
The group of coronavirus cases has grown to more than a dozen, and the state government of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, has declared a five-day “instant block” starting at midnight on Friday.
Everyone, except the workers considered essential, must stay at home, although two hours of exercise in the open air and one hour to go to the supermarket or pharmacy are allowed. Players and individuals deemed essential to the Australian Open will be permitted at Melbourne Park. Viewers, unfortunately, should stay away until perhaps the singles semifinal, scheduled to start Thursday.
“Players will compete in a bubble not unlike what they did over the year,” said Craig Tiley, chief executive of Tennis Australia, which organizes the tournament.
Nobody is happy with that.
“It’s been a lot of fun to have the crowd back, especially here,” said Serena Williams after beating Anastasia Potapova in two sets in the third round on Friday. “But, you know what, at the end of the day we have to do what is best. I hope everything goes well “.
I’m here to say it won’t be. After what I witnessed during the first five days, it will be terrible, without the essential dynamics that make sport the best in improv theater.
Nick Kyrgios, tennis anti-hero everywhere except Australia, where he is loved, led fans to a miracle on Wednesday night. He saved two match points in the fourth set against Ugo Humbert, the 22-year-old Frenchman on the rise. He then defeated Humbert in the fifth set in the face of an explosive crowd that never gave up on his local hero.
Kyrgios is the rare tennis player who attracts rugby fans. They shouted to keep Kyrgios alive and Humbert, seed # 29, on the edge to the last point.
“Half full and it looked like it was a full stadium,” said Kyrgios. “I got goosebumps at the end.”
Humbert lost those two match points, although he was serving. He heard the fireworks in the seats a few feet away. As he watched Kyrgios encourage him and absorb everything, his eyes seemed to fill with fear. There was another set to play, but the crowd was not going to let Humbert out alive.
It is no exaggeration to say that Humbert wins this match easily on a quiet court.
Kyrgios and his team returned on Friday night, when he faced Dominic Thiem of Austria, the current US Open champion. The roars started when Kyrgios broke Thiem in the first game. As the crowd screamed, Kyrgios waved his arms and cupped his hand, signaling to his fans that if he had any chance against seed number 3, which looked like a machine, they would be.
And so began more than three hours of interactive drama, with all the seat strikes, provocations and punches needed by someone who barely played in a year to stay competitive with one of the best players on the planet. As the match extended to the fifth set and passed 10:30 pm, a strange clock started, because the fans should be at home watching the blockade around midnight.
In the end it was not enough, as Thiem won in five sets, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, but it is difficult to believe that it would have been tight without him. “It is not the same sport without the crowd,” said Kyrgios.
So, here’s a big reveal from last week: all those famous athletes who have always insisted that they are so attached to themselves that they don’t hear the crowd? Well, it seems very clear that they are lying.
Here was Novak Djokovic, who won the championship eight times. He described Rod Laver Arena as his backyard. He was getting ready to play the other day, when a group of women with a Serbian flag stood up and serenaded him with the song “Ole-Ole”, culminating in “Novak Djokovic is hot, hot, hot!”
Djokovic gave up trying to be cool. He walked away from the court, started laughing, then shook his head to regain focus.
Here was Ajla Tomljanovic, from Australia, trying to grab the third set for what would probably be the biggest victory of his career, a defeat by Simona Halep, second in the ranking. She was in front of a crowd from her hometown that carried her all night, but could not hope for victory.
“I felt that wave of people cheering for you,” said Tomljanovich, his voice breaking after the defeat. “I’m afraid to say that, but it could be the highlight of the year with the weather and the crowd.”
She is not the only one. I don’t know what I fear the most with the end of this mission – the last cold winter month in the Northeast or the largely empty version of sports that the pandemic has spawned.
It is something, yes, but it is not sport.