HUMBLE BOOTY BEGINNINGS - PART TWO Sunday, February 24, 2008

HUMBLE BOOTY BEGINNINGS

Part Two: The Boot Professionalism

They say that time is a relative concept.  Thank God for that because it means that somewhere within the explanation of time’s relativity I could probably find a scientifically-justified ‘reason’ (excuse) for the ‘apparent’ five week gap between my first two ‘weekly’ articles. I’d abstractly quote Einstein here and there and before long I’d have trimmed down that five weeks near enough to168 hours.  But enough of physics for now; it will suffice to say that for those of you interested in reading on through Booty’s pre-professional tennis journey, I have ironed out those niggly creases in time and regulated its inconsistencies so that a week now represents a week* (*relativity adjusted for). So let’s again back it up about 250 weeks (a little before his Royal Federerness appointed himself king of tennis) and see how Booty’s progress was, er, well, progressing.

One of Eric’s personal character traits that first made an impression on me was his professionalism.  The initial hint of this professionalism literally made an impression on me when I tripped over his medicine ball before our first practice hit together (as you’ll remember from reading Part One from my article of last ‘week’) but his deep belief in giving tennis his all became humorously apparent to me at the closure of our first tournament together there in Toulouse in early July 2003.

The tournament was at its quarterfinal stage and the draw now consisted of seven Argentineans, one Frenchman, zero Booties (no pun intended), zero Willies (again, no pun intended), zero Gareths and zero Juans.  That’s right; we’d all lost, giving way to eight clay court specialists.  We had however all respected our rankings (it is important as foreigners in France not to lose to anyone ranked lower than yourself as it adds to the already difficult task of getting yourself accepted into tournament draws), so the tournament president was kind enough to allow us one more night’s stay one on the clubhouse floor before we packed up and moved on to the next tournament. Our road trip posse was harmonizing nicely and seeing as our next matches were not scheduled before Tuesday (it was now Saturday night) we had decided to celebrate a successful season debut with pizza and a couple of beers. 

As the pizza was digesting and the beers were taking their initial effect, Juan entertained us with a story of him being pulled over by police in Australia.  Apparently, unbeknownst to Juan, his brother had recently been booked for speeding at which incidence he’d illegally used Juan’s identity (as his own licence had previously been suspended). So, when Juan presented his licence to the police they ran it through the computer to discover that it had been suspended. Upon informing him of this, Juan confidently responded ‘Well there must be a problem with your computer, because that’s my licence.’ He somehow felt that his physical possession of his licence (a flimsy little plastic card with his photo on it) somehow proved himself to police to be above all suspicion of any wrongdoings or fraudulent acts. This story reflects well on Juan’s relaxed Samoan upbringing and illustrates his easygoing attitude (which will become a relevant element in the demonstration of booty’s professionalism as you will discover by reading on).

As is often the case, the topic of discussion found itself being guided back to tennis.  We talked about our successful hustle in make it to Toulouse on time and of course we made a couple of friendly jibes at Boot’s little on-court breakdown a couple of days back.  At this juncture of proceedings Boot made reference to the indoor hard-court that the club facilities had to offer as he pointed out that were he and I to play a set on that (as opposed to the ‘slippery dirt’ outside) that the tears would be flowing from a different set of tear ducts.  Actions speak louder than words (just ask Hilary or Obama) so before long Booty and I decided to hand over our portion of the beers to Juan and Gareth (we’d only just settled into our first beer at that stage) so that we could settle things on court.  Despite it being nearly midnight, we warmed up properly (Booty in honouring his professionalist attitude, me because I was well over due for a shoulder operation and even the slightest of over-strenuous physical output before proper warming up caused me excruciating pain). As the lights warmed up, so did we, and the competitive juices were well and truly flowing. Tommy will be happy to know that it was all in a good ‘sportsmanshiply’ manner; Booty and I are both passionate about tennis and were happy to have someone up the other end of the net to help us enjoy our passion to the fullest (have you guys read Tommy’s articles? After reading his first article ‘playing tennis the Gustavus way’ I wanted to put my hand on my heart or the bible and sing the ‘Gustavus spangled banner’ - or whatever school song they have going there – before racing out to my local black market dealer to pick up a fake passport so as to shave a decade off my age thus allowing me to join the Gustavus program. And as for Phil’s trivia knowledge, well I can’t compete with these guys in the writing arena so I’ll just shut up and get back to my story telling).

So Booty and I played a very tightly-contested set witnessed by Gareth, Juan and the rapidly dwindling supply of beers.  The 6-6 set was settled with a tie-breaker (let’s not name winners and losers because we are all winners right? Well at least I was always a winner in Booty/Willy practice matches until our first official tournament meeting later on in the season where Booty put an end to my domination with a 3-set win in the final in front of a very proud Jan and Big Cat Butorac).  Ok, so at the conclusion of our 7/6 practice set that night, during Booty’s extensive warm-down stretch, his dedication to professionalism was about to be demonstrated.  Booty and I were still basking in the euphoric glow of the post-exertion endorphin release as Juan and Gareth were (in a more overtly manner) enjoying their own alcohol-induced euphoria.  To paint the picture clearly, Juan was still in his sweaty clay-stained tennis gear from his match nearly 14 hours ago that same day. He hadn’t showered or stretched, he’d just been ‘taking it easy’ all day in the wake of his loss.  He’d just made short work of six or seven beers and was ‘feeling the buzz’ as he puts it. At this point, he strolls onto the court near to where Eric and I are stretching, picks up a ball and one of my rackets before casually making his way back to the baseline. At this point, to the great astonishment of Gareth, Eric, and I, Juan turned around and unleashed a full-blooded first serve at around the 190km/h mark.  Given the fragile condition of my shoulder, witnessing Juan’s ludicrously unprofessional behaviour obviously caused me to grimace but the look on Booty’s face from something out of this world. It was as if he’d lost the innate ability to breathe as his face contorted into a perfectly expressive look of disbelief.  Remember, I’d only known Booty for a couple of days at this stage, so to witness such an intense look on his face was as if I was offered a direct portal into his inner-self, that part of himself that doesn’t comprehend the function or even the existence of unprofessionalism.  I was completely absorbed in studying Booty’s expression as he himself was completely absorbed in his own of horror as a result of what he had just witnessed.  In that all-time great movie ‘Apocalypse Now’ (inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ – c’mon Phil, give us some related trivia please), just as Marlon Brando – in his monologue towards the end of the film – utters those classic words ‘The Horror, The Horror,’ Francis Ford Coppola should have opted to cut to Booty’s facial expression of that night just to really sum up what true horror really is, as felt and expressed by the human being.

And then, at that moment, as Juan sensed the general mood of astonishment, he turns to us and utters in his relaxed Samoan manner, his own classic words; “What could go wrong?”  (These words have since become sacred to Booty, Gareth, Juan and me).

Now I know that the true humour of a moment can never be justly portrayed to others who didn’t personally witness it first-hand but let me just say that this is one of those moments that you have to believe in God – only a divine being could so perfectly construct such a moment.  No movie director/actor combo in the history of cinema has ever been able to capture the perfect balance of that moment; the horror and incomprehensibility expressed by Booty, contrasted against the total bliss of Juan’s ignorance to the myriad of things that could ‘go wrong’ when serving a ball at full pace with someone else’s racket at 2am while drunk and cold.  

And in having the existence of God confirmed by the happenings of that moment, I proceeded to thank Him for having the foresight of presenting us with it after the physical workout of our set because otherwise I would certainly have done irreparable damage to my abdominal muscles.  I can remember being twisted and contorted into impossible positions as my stomach muscles locked up into spasms while my body made futile attempts at digesting the humour.  Alone there in that indoor court in the early French hours of that morning, the four of us seemed to experience some kind of divine communion.  We were all choking amidst fits of uncontrollable laughter as we vainly attempted to share in detail with each other our individual perspectives of the comedy of the moment.

So despite having all lost at the beginning of that day, the day was eventually capped off with a very fulfilling night (which would not have been the case had one of us won and consequently been playing the next day).  God was kind to us that night my friends (spoken in the tone of George Costanza’s “the sea was angry that day my friends” during his briefly-lived stint as a marine biologist): He showed us that big-serving left-handed Americans are beatable on indoor hard-court; He proved his own existence, evidenced by his generous gift of such a divinely-constructed humorous experience; and, most relevantly to this article, He offered me an unforgettable insight into Booty’s determined, ‘professionalistic’ nature.

After practically no sleep at all, we left early for the next tournament (which was to be in my ‘home town’ of Evreux) so that we could make it in time to watch tennis’s most prestigious match, the Wimbledon final.  Little did we know at the time that we were going to witness the unfolding of another divine gift to the tennis world, a certain Roger Federer who was preparing to play his first Grandslam final (against Mark Philippoussis).

Hope you’re enjoying getting to know the Boot and what paths he’s travelled on the way to where he presently is. Next week (I promise) we’ll explore the issue of ‘Is Booty the easiest human being in the world to travel with?’ (Booty has to be a high contender for this honorary title, especially considering the stated pre-requisite of ‘being human’ which eliminates Gareth Keating from contention – if Federer comes from the planet called ‘We Play Really Good Tennis Up Here’, then Gareth comes from the planet called ‘We Are Really Easy To Travel With Up Here’).