Timothy Boyle is a sports columnist with The Sunday Age
It would be appropriate in these pages to write about Wimbledon, or the Euros, or the local football, but what fills the various screens in my life is all in the form of aggressive opinion and semantics, not in sports action. The foremost contest in the world at this moment, even within our local sporting context, is one of ideas, ideologies and allegiances.
As a white man in Australia one can admit easily to a state of ignorance about the experience of racism. But we should include in our stated ignorance any knowledge of the blood-run feelings that inspire acts of defiance from black athletes like Muhammad Ali, or the gestures of Adam Goodes on the MCG.
As a timid child of the '90s, scared of fighting, I had a framed poster of Muhammad Ali on my wall.
If you've ever had the misfortune of sitting next to the "Fanatics" at the Australian Open, you'll know how stupefying the idea of nationalism in a tennis match can be. The Olympics are months away, and already the fanatical voices are starting to come, delivering the good word about the Australian spirit.
Until recently, I never fully appreciated the sport of basketball. To me it was a severely American game that felt outside my culture. The legend of Michael Jordan came to me in colour during the '90s, and then for a long time dominated the sport in my imagination. Then I witnessed a game in Memphis, and one small athletic feat changed things.
James Cook named Cape Byron in NSW after the British naval officer John Byron.
I understood something about risk and reward in sport from the time I learnt about how my father's eye came to be a vacant, white orb.
Andre Agassi called tennis the loneliest sport. He wrote, "Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement."
So, this is it for Lleyton Hewitt. The last show for the great Australian tennis player whose career has been matched for longevity perhaps only by its ending. But then this is what happens when you reach the top of the world at the age of 20. The crest precedes a very long and natural decline.
There's a scene I sometimes think about when I think about the nature of sportsmen, and how strange things can get.
Search pagination
Save articles for later.
Subscribe for unlimited access to news. Login to save articles.
Return to the homepage by clicking on the site logo.