Sports Saturday
In anticipation of the U. S. Open this coming week, I reflect on a passage that came to mind when I was playing my 32-year-old son Darien this past weekend. I beat him on Saturday and split sets with him on Sunday.
Darien is a superb athlete—he was captain of his college’s soccer team—and if he had time to practice more, he would beat me regularly. He has powerful topspin shots and very good reactions at the net. But I have 30 years of experience on him and throw off his rhythm with slices and blocked shots, which I refer to as old-man tennis. The strategy allows me to steal games that I should not win. I see myself as Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew.
I suspect you don’t remember Gremio. He is the elder suitor vying for the hand of Bianca against Lucentio. It appears that Lucentio will win when he starts outbidding Gremio for Bianca’s hand. (Or to be strictly accurate, when his servant Tranio starts outbidding Gremio as the servant is disguised as the master so that Vincentio can pass for a musician and seduce Bianca.) However, although Gremio seems defeated, he warns Tranio that he’s an “old Italian fox” who won’t give up the field so easily.
Here is their initial interchange:
Gremio: Youngling, thou canst not love so dear as I.
Tranio: Graybeard, thy love doth freeze.
Gremio: But thine doth fry.
Skipper, stand back: ’tis age that nourisheth.
Tranio: But youth in ladies’ eyes that flourisheth.
The back and forth then moves on to a bidding war, with Tranio prevailing:
Tranio: Gremio, ’tis known my father hath no less
Than three great argosies; besides two galliases,
And twelve tight galleys: these I will assure her,
And twice as much, whate’er thou offer’st next.
Gremio: Nay, I have offer’d all, I have no more;
And she can have no more than all I have:
If you like me, she shall have me and mine.
Tranio: Why, then the maid is mine from all the world,
By your firm promise: Gremio is out-vied.
Here’s the passage that came to my mind:
Gremio: Now I fear thee not:
Sirrah young gamester, your father were a fool
To give thee all, and in his waning age
Set foot under thy table: tut, a toy!
An old Italian fox is not so kind, my boy.
To which Tranio replies (after Gremio has left),
A vengeance on your crafty wither’d hide!
So think of me as an old Italian fox. For that matter, think of Roger Federer as that fox, even though he’s only a year older than Darien. With Rafael Nadal injured and Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray not playing their best tennis at the moment, there’s a chance that Fed, at 33, could “steal” another major trophy. He’s becoming more crafty with age, changing his racquet and charging the net more. He just might emerge triumphant.
If I am looking to Gremio for hope, unfortunately, the future does not look good. Youth, vigor, and money end up winning Bianca and Lucentio gets the prize. Gremio is left out in the cold.
In other words, Gremio’s threat to put the “young gamester” in his place is empty bragging on his part. Some day Darien will start beating my withered hide, and Federer’s craftiness will get him only so far. Even with one obstacle out of the way (Nadal injured or, in the play, the elder daughter Kate married off), what I fear is that, in the end, youthful Novak will come strutting in and run off with the girl. Too often in tennis it is youth that flourisheth.