On many occasions we have heard or read certain statements that aim to explain (to us) what a deportation. Derogatory comments that, according to these illustrious issuers, would come to point out the artificial nature of the exercise. “Opinions” that do not take into account the protagonists of the circuit ATP y WTA.
In this way, the opinionators do not hesitate to define tennis as: “two individuals who hit a ball with a racket”. With an air of superiority, they seem to want to enlighten those of us who follow such a practice.
The different athletes, players and coaches continue to support these gossip and stereotypes that the only thing they show is the ignorance of the one who enunciates them. An ignorance that informs about the situation of such minds, since it puts on the table the absence of categories and reasons for correctly assessing the object of study in question.
Tennis as an institution and ceremony
For our part, we are clear about two guiding principles that allow us to define what this sport that we love is. As we say, tennis is a institution built on the core of a ceremony.
Specifically, this ceremony is each of the matches that are played. Summarizing, but showing the main thing, ceremonies, as an anthropological concept, enjoy three features that apply to tennis as the glove fits the hand. Ceremonial doing requires normativity, abstraction and repeatability.
In the first place, there is a regulatory code governed by a series of mandatory laws. This characteristic of institutional development allows gambling, but it also generates a series of tensions with those who play it. That is, there is a conflict of interest between professionals and the code.
This necessary tightness is what predisposes and forces the ceremony to close on its own axes. In simpler words, within a court the only thing that matters is playing the match. Everything else is segregated, amputated by the machinery that forces compliance with what is stipulated.
For this reason, the ideological is dispensed with, for the time being. The game must be played beyond thoughts about COVID, the number of relatives of each participant, their dreams, their intentions or their political positions. I repeat, within the ceremony, internally to it.
We do not mean that there are no influences (since there are), but rather that this division approach between the internal and the external formalizes/professionalizes the sport in question. If the normative constitutes a sort of legislative powerthe elimination/the abstract constitutes the formality of the matter.
Lastly, repeatability, as the fact of having a beginning and an end, is a condition sine qua non.
about the viewer
Now, we have to make a fundamental question clear: the ceremony is not limited to the protagonists (tennis players and referees), but is also limited to the attendees on site and those of us who follow them from TV.
We cannot go fully into the difficulty that this thesis produces, but I leave you with a couple of questions to help me in such a task: is there room for neutrality in someone who watches professional tennis? That is, if there is no such impartiality, to what extent is the public a spectator? If the spectator gets involved in the fight, he takes sides: wouldn’t this category be blurred? Wouldn’t we be, perhaps, actors of the ceremony itself? (*the lions in comments).
These lines are worth to situate what would be a first hypothesis. How could it be otherwise, what is exposed is a very brief introduction, first nuances (not ramblings). In the next of these thoughtful articles, I will write about ball boys as an essential part of doing this.
I hope we can continue to think together, in line.
