I’m going to write posts which are only 500 words long. I keep on trying to write long pieces and getting bogged down. So if I set an artificial limit, they may be easier to write and more readable.
They’ll be on anything – music, sport, film,
books, politics, personal … anything ... here's the first ...
Ronnie and Serena
Ronnie O’Sullivan is the Serena Williams of
snooker and vice versa. It is not a perfect comparison, I know. With Ronnie,
for starters, there is no Venus figure. Venus Williams herself is one of the
great undersung heroic enigmas in sport and, like it or not, the Serena Williams story does not happen without her, but, for the purposes of this brief
comparison, I’ll have to pretend she doesn’t exist.
What particularly fascinates me about Ronnie and
Serena is that they were both, in their day, seen as too easily distracted, not
focused enough on their careers, somehow disrespectful to their profession, and yet, here they are, way after most of
their peers have faded, still at it, still battling and striving.
It raises questions about whether too much
intensity at a young age shortens careers, while a bit of distraction and
hinterland does the opposite.
In both their cases, as well, their natural
talent is almost held against them, or taken so for granted that people don’t
notice what battlers and tacticians they are. O’Sullivan doesn’t magically win
all his matches by hitting 147 breaks in 5 minutes every frame. Williams
doesn’t serve down 130mph ace after ace. They have peaks and troughs in every
match, they fight and commit, they’re prepared to get ugly if needs be.
They invite polarisation where none needs exist.
If Serena Williams is being deeply rude to a linesperson, or Ronnie is slagging
off his fellow pros, you don’t actually have to defend that if you love them.
They are overwhelming wonderful and great for their sport, but that doesn’t
mean they can’t do shit which is out of order sometimes. And if you hate them, if you think something they've done along the way mars the grandeur and magnitude of their achievements, well that's a shame for you.
They have both had to endure more than the usual
amount of off-court/table trauma, they’ve both had to endure far more intrusion
into their personal lives than is usual, both had to carry the full weight of
their respective sports. There is, with both, a peculiar fragility which belies their extraordinary
winning ratio. I often feel Serena’s on the point of cracking, of giving up,
but how rarely she does. Likewise Ronnie.
They both seem to care little about the
opposition. Unlike, say, Michael Jordan, who was apparently always inspired by
making it personal, it hardly ever seems personal with Williams and O’Sullivan.
They both seemed baffled as much as anything by the “rivalries” that the likes
of Sharapova and Shaun Murphy sought to establish with them.
I’d say that Serena seems a pretty benevolent
presence off-court these days, whereas Ronnie’s dismissiveness of the younger
generation of snooker players is funny but sour.
They also differ in that I genuinely believe
Ronnie when he says it’s not about winning and losing for him, it’s about how
he plays. It’s clear that winning doesn’t always bring him satisfaction, which
must be terrible in a way, but I would also imagine has brought him a calm and
a reasonable ability to deal with losing in and of itself.
Whereas, with Serena, I think, it’s all about the
winning, more than the process. Rightly or wrongly, she’s never been seen as
the Federer of women's sport, the artist-champion, the great aesthete, whereas Ronnie has had to
put up with that notion throughout.
Anyway, here they both roll along - here's Ronnie struggling his way to further greatness, winning his 6th world title 6 years after his 5th, probably after many thought he'd still be able or bothered to. Look at Serena, almost 39, she's lost her last couple of Grand Slam titles, people are looking towards the end ... I think there'll be one more.
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