We’ve all got that jigsaw. That one that doesn’t quite fit together properly. The pieces are correct but the bigger picture is there somewhere, hidden beneath the broken ridges that fold across each other slightly. It’s a frustration because it SHOULD be fine! The box says 200 pieces and you have that many but still, there’s something not quite right about all this. And then you spot it, there, bent out of shape in the corner, eaten up and shat out by your family dog, crayoned over before that by your little brother, accidentally thrown up across by the “fun” family uncle, is that magical 201st piece. It shouldn’t work because it shouldn’t but it does and so when you slot that final piece in and stand back to admire it and you finally have it at just the right angle and the bird on the branch of the tree outside your window is singing just the right note and your mum has made you your favourite meal for dinner, that’s when you finally get Jeļena Ostapenko.
Of course, you awake the next morning and boom, the piece is gone and the jigsaw is wrong and your dad’s cheating on your mum and the bird has been hit by a car and the dog has shat on the carpet again but none of that matters now because for that brief moment, you saw Ostapenko at her best, a thoughtless nature about her. A rare sight, she seemed free, unburdened. You know you got lucky because Ostapenko isn’t traceable, you can’t follow her as she goes. She’ll come to you only when she’s good and ready and present you with this tennis. If it were logical, it wouldn’t be her.
Her game when it’s like this reminds me of what happens when you give someone a racket for the first time and tell them to try and play. They swing as hard as they can and hope and fail right as she does not. It’s almost childlike in its addicting simplicity. Innocent violence. Bang-bang-bang, there we have it, folks. In theory, a player of Iga Świątek’s creative gusto should be perfectly positioned to unsettle opponents. The problem for her, as we saw in their match at the US Open last night, is that Ostapenko has little respect for thinking tennis. Many have described Świątek as being like a deer in headlights and that’s a touch unfair given the headlights in question were attached to a jet-powered steam-roller. Could she have done more? I mean, maybe, but when you’re wearing the crown and the jester tricks it from your head, there’s not much you can do but accept and applaud.
Clinging to motivation within professional sport is difficult, so quietly easy it is to find yourself without any. I think Ostapenko combats this in the only way she can, by remaining unpredictable to everyone including herself. I can just as easily see her losing in her next match in straightforward fashion as I can her holding the trophy come Saturday and I love that for her and for us. Tennis is wild and so is she, with her attitude and outfits that some call terrible but has me wishing that more players would be willing to be themselves out there.
People will ask what the point of a player like Ostapenko is if she doesn’t back up her wins and I’d answer those people by asking what the point of anything is as we all stand atop this hunk of rock twirling through space on a collision course with god knows what as the ice-caps slowly melt and the sky slowly burns? We’re all just bumbling about trying to find our way and if Ostapenko’s way is sometimes through jagged undergrowth barbed wire fences and sometimes firing cannonballs, so be it.
Popcorn Tennis 