Sid Waddell now refers to Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor not as the greatest arrowsman who is or ever was, for example, but as the greatest chucker who will ever be. Since neither he nor I will live long enough to see anyone come anywhere near Taylor’s 15 world titles, Sid will never be force fed humble pie. Even so, to borrow the closing line from the western Shane, forever is a long time.
Once athletics experts agreed Michael Johnson’s astonishing 200 metres world record of 19.32 seconds would survive for untold decades. Then along came Usain Bolt (19.19).
When Pete Sampras won his 14th grand-slam title in 2002, the received wisdom insisted that no one would ever beat that. Within seven years Roger Federer had his 15th.
Very, very rarely, however, someone sets a record which we may safely state will never be beaten. Whether it gives her much satisfaction I doubt, but Dinara Safina did just that in Melbourne this week. In losing 0-6, 0-6 to Kim Clijsters at the Australian Open, the Russian became the first player to have held the world No 1 ranking, of either gender, to lose a grand-slam tie without taking a game.
You need not be the Lucasian professor of maths to work out that – unless the system is modified to include negative scoring, on the lines of the penalty for a bad interruption on University Challenge — this will never be bettered (or worsened).
How this engagingly gauche and gangly 24 year-old descended so quickly to such a nadir seems a question less for a physiotherapist, despite a recent back problem, than a psychotherapist.
The family has rich form in intriguing mental health professionals. The borderline lunacy of brother Marat Safin undermined a talent arguably as lavish as the Fed’s. He too plummeted down the rankings after reaching No 1, although for the opposite reason to his rosy-cheeked sibling. Marat went on a two-year party to celebrate his first major at the US Open of 2000, and, despite adding a second in Australia five years later, never really recovered from that breakthrough.
Dinara’s downfall was sparked by her failure to win a major at all (she reached three finals, choking hideously each time).
After she became No 1 in the spring of 2009, the sniping about her undeservedness eroded her fragile confidence. All the bitching from Serena and the gang drained what minute reserves of self-belief she had. Once her fingers had been prized from the cliff’s edge six months later, she plummeted at startling speed. When the rankings are updated after this tournament, she will be outside the top 100.
If the Klijsters catastrophe lent a literal gloss to the phrase “nihilistic pointlessness” (before going on court, she later said, she couldn’t imagine winning a single point; in fact she took fewer than 20), the question posed by her career remains purely existential: what possible purpose to it can there be?
Unlikely comebacks do happen in tennis, of course, as with Andre Agassi’s V-shaped odyssey from No 1 to nowhere and back up to the top again. But he had a uniquely effective return of serve and the ruthlessness to match his ambition. Safina has neither, and watching the humiliations (she lost 0-6, 1-6 recently to Marion Bartoli) is intruding into private grief.
If she rates dignity above masochistic delight, she would be smart to ignore whatever utopian drivel the sports psychologists are peddling her, and listen to the father of psychoanalysis. “If you can’t do it,” said Sigmund Freud (and this long before Homer Simpson reached the same conclusion), “give up”.
Icarus never grew a second pair of wings. Nor will Safina, if you’ll excuse the sort of long-term prediction I ridiculed above, if she carries on playing until Doomsday. She has set a record that will stand until the End of Days, however arcane and unwanted, and that (along with career earnings of more than $10 million) will have to suffice.
