Love All : Lessons in Love from World of Tennis

Sportspersons are more like us off the field than on it. They fall in love, they break-up and they fall in love again. Some marry and live happily ever after while some end up divorced. Avnish Anand looks for some such stories from the world of tennis stars.

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Growing up as a sports fan in the late 80’s and early 90’s in India, tennis was my window to a lot of things in the world. This was before cable TV came into our lives – things like European Football and the NBA were only found occasionally in the SportStar ( god bless them for that) . Tennis was one international sport that we got to see a lot of, courtesy Doordarshan, even though they used to break- off for the news at the most crucial moments of the game.

Tennis played an extremely important role in filling me with life’s wisdom – pertaining to love – its various forms and its nuances. Its role in this regard was very similar to the way we got educated in the tenets of love and romance by foreign novels and movies.

I think this happened because tennis was an individual game and an extremely popular one as well – there were lots of characters and good looking stars – and as a result tennis stars got a lot of attention from the media which was forever filling us in with juicy details of the player’s private lives. There was also plenty of time during the matches to catch frequent glimpses of the special boxes for the players’ entourage – as a result we got to see and know the player’s family, their love interests and their coaches as well. Tennis had both men and women players creating enough possibilities for real life case studies. Additionally, those players were largely westerners who led far more colourful lives adding to our educational process.

The only other sport which we saw often was cricket but for some reason this generation largely escaped public scrutiny of their private lives, well except for a few like Ravi Shastri and Vivian Richards.

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The first thing that tennis did was to shake me out of a child’s notion of a perfect love story, instilled in me largely by Hindi movies. Back in the day, I expected Steffi Graf and Boris Becker to fall in love and get married. After all they were both top tennis players, immensely popular and good looking and from the same country – so no relocation and adjustment problems. They were like a lead pair in a Hindi film and seemed perfect. Their not falling in love taught me a lesson that this perfect love story concept between two people who were perfect in a similar kind of way was just a creation of Hindi films and nothing more.

This lesson was repeated when I discovered that a similar perfect pair from America had also not managed to go beyond a brief romance. That Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert had tried and failed was in fact a more telling rejection of my old theory.

After battering one of my theories, tennis, much to my surprise corroborated something else that I had discovered through Hindi films – that there existed these gifted individuals called playboys who could make many women fall in love with them at the same time without making the slightest bit of effort. Andre Agassi was the first who made me feel jealous and then Bjorn Born added really rubbed it in.

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And then tennis gave me a shocker – people of the same sex could also love one another intimately. This knowledge was thanks to Judy Nelson demanding a share of Martina Navratilova’s wealth for being her partner. It took me a while to figure this concept out but I found a lot of reference material in the Sports World magazine (may its soul rest in piece, there was no Google then) to help me understand what a ‘partner’ meant in this particular case. I was a lot less shocked when I found that another tennis player, Billie Jean King had actually championed the cause of these same sex lovers.

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A little later I discovered why Boris Becker didn’t fall for Steffi Graf – because he was in love with Barbara Feltus. This saga also opened my eyes to inter-racial love and its unacceptable status in society. I never knew of such issues – in India we were all brown people. Boris Becker became a poster child of the cause. Being a major fan I couldn’t help but get a finer understanding of the issues. Detailed information was again courtesy of the Sports World.

If Becker was wooing Barbara, then his celebrated rival Stefan Edberg was falling in love with Annette Olsen. While I hated the Swede’s talent on a grass court, there was no doubt that he was a tremendously good looking and handsome man. Nothing less than a modern-day Helen or Cleopatra would be good enough for his combination of looks and talent. But here he was madly in love with a cute but plump woman. The moral of the story – Love is not just about physical attraction. It’s also about matching mental wavelengths. Today when I see Federer and Mirjka, I can’t stop thinking about Edberg.

The final lesson happened a lot later. But it involved two characters from the old days – Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi – two of the most popular players of this era. For years Steffi Graf had been in a quiet relationship with Michael Bartels. Agassi on the other hand had had a dream marriage after finally finding love with Brooke Shields. Then there was heart burn for both of them as Steffi and Bartels broke up and Agassi and Shields divorced. But in a most amazing turn of events, Agassi and Graf met, fell in love, got married, had two children and have lived happily ever after. This is one of the most amazing love stories ever and gives hope to everyone who believes in true love. The final love lesson from tennis was about believing in love itself.

Avnish Anand works for an internet start-up Caratlane - www.caratlane - and also writes an interesting sports blog - www.acommonfan.com.