«The human beauty we are talking about here is of a very specific type; it can be called kinetic beauty (…) What it really has to do with is the reconciliation of human beings with the fact of having a body».
Thus, David Foster Wallace in his essay, Tennis as a religious experiencehe wondered in wonder at the figure of Roger Federerhow was it possible that the exercise of this sport engendered a beauty that does not constitute the future of the game.
In other words, although sport does not have beauty as its goal, tennis would be a vehicle that would allow humans to express such a condition. The deployment of a body art that manages to stage the existing polarity between the aesthetic and the warlike.
It is not only about acting according to technical capabilities, but about exemplifying ethical virtues such as courage, perseverance or the fact, always difficult, of being able to accept defeat, to deal with frustration.
In tennis, the court is the temple and the competitors owe it respect. Not surprisingly, for Wallace, tennis players like the Swiss are the living image of Stoic philosophy.
This introduction synthesizes some issues that we are going to deal with, since, on the one hand, the cited author was included in a generation (the so-called generation X) and on the other, it illustrates some of the faculties that make a player a tennis player. It seems that in the wave of young people (and not so young) who play tennis, there are many players, but few tennis players.
The next generation as a negative term
under the rubric of Next Gena series of applicants appear with the aim of replacing the almighty Big Three. Gods waiting for their titans.
However, taking as a reference the use of the term generation or generational, some questions appear that clarify several of the particularities of the phrase.
Let’s give some examples: What differentiates a generation like x, millennial, z, etc, from a generation in a sport? Will it not be seen, perhaps, included in one of the previous ones? That is to say, the Next Gen will not be a product, the result of the union between different generations? Or, on the contrary, is the Next Gen a generation that requires a separate theorization, detached from the previous ones as it enjoys a special idiosyncrasy.
I firmly believe that in the current tennis scene and in society in general, the Next Gen is presented as a rara avis.
In the first place, as a totally anomalous condition, since, unlike other waves, the concept defines, but only intentionally. It is not a generation, but what a generation is supposed to be. Being more exact, the conception of the Next Gen not only describes, but also prescribes: we do not define by explaining how they are, but how they should be. So the Next Gen will never exist because, when it exists, it will simply cease to be. This is the keynote of the matter, the great paradox.
Therefore, the current tennis world wonders when the Next Gen is going to take the next step, that is, the moment of its destruction upon reaching success. The culmination in which the candidates cease to be such contenders.
This is one of the questions that sport gives us, one of the problems that require rigor, such as that which must be used to study the development of tennis itself (on a historical, technological, physical level, etc.).
We are facing a genius of the irony, because what it is about is using a word to say exactly the opposite. It is the greatness of a generation, the Big Three, that conditions the entire discipline. Some icons that are they who empower the new era and not the other way around.
It will not be the generation to come that reminds us who those three indescribable figures of the present were, but it is these talents that force us to point out the rest. In other words, the Next Gen is a purely negative denomination: they are the players who they do not belong to Olympus.
The range of names, personalities and styles is so wide that it cannot be closed in a single category as generic as the one mentioned. Because of this, perhaps the question is not what is missing for the Next Gen to “storm the skies”? but when does a player become a reality despite the living legends? To what extent is fair with some champions of “lesser size”?
Those who neither can nor have reached that level proudly point out their achievements adding that such trophies are of greater importance for having faced such athletes. Perhaps those are his letters of introduction and rather than undervalue we should value what has been done by such mortals.
In addition, it may be that the behavior that we demand of them is contradictory to what we carry out. Perhaps we are not guilty of trivially comparing certain young players with the best, putting excessive pressure on athletes who have a career to do and, with the opposite effect, we are continually presenting veterans as people who are not old enough to achieve what they achieve. Perhaps we are not the ones who exhibit those deficiencies that materialize the society of the spectacle, by presupposing that certain figures must correspond to our desires.
The current generation as a positive term
In a way, the next generation is still a scapegoat. These really existing battlers are the true generation, the Big Three Generation, even though they never reach the levels of catharsis that such rackets continue to provide us (the “Federer momentswhat Wallace would say).
Let’s enjoy the highlights, memorable sequences that, luckily, continue to give us. Let’s bet on him carpe diem.
For this reason, and in the same way that the book religions were blurring, without sending to oblivion, the Greek polytheism, we must keep in the retina the moments where we were lucky enough to witness the union of the opposites, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. For names come and go, but beauty is immortal.
