Coca-Cola IPTL diary – A courtside experience to remember

Roger Federer was a treat to watch

When it comes to watching tennis matches live in a stadium, I would strongly suggest that you do better than just being punctual. There is a chance that if you are an early bird (like I was today, arriving at 2:30 pm for a 4 pm match), you may get a chance to watch 31 Grand Slam titles on the court at the same time.

Roger Federer and Pete Sampras hit for 20 minutes, but there were only a handful of people in the 17,000 capacity Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium – the venue of the Coca-Cola International Premier Tennis League in New Delhi – to share the joys with. For a bunch of guys who got to the city only in the wee hours of the morning, Federer and Sampras looked sharp and alert as they went about their drills of groundstrokes and volley and serves.

Tennis is a sport that is highly suitable for television. Modern television coverage of the sport is a collage of live feed filled with all sorts of trivia, statistics, informative graphics and, increasingly, social media, all held together by the thread of commentary.

Then there are short breaks built into the scoring system at regular intervals, longer breaks scheduled at the ends of sets, and plenty of space in the frame of play to position advertisements of the sponsors. It’s a win-win situation for both, the fans and the corporations.

But still, you should go to a stadium to see a tennis match at least once in your life. TV doesn’t do justice to the pace of a tennis match, nor does it give you the complete picture of exactly how difficult the shot making is. The balls seem to fly faster and the players seem to move quicker. That exchange of volleys at the net seems like pure reflexes, and that teasing lob that just went over the flailing racquet of a player happens in just a bit more than the blink of an eye.

Then there is the action on the side-lines. In regular tennis matches, there isn’t much to see here as players have only the company of themselves. But in the Coca-Cola IPTL, you get to see so much more. At every change of ends, you can see Gael Monfils jump out of his chair, grab a bottle of water, open it and hand it to his team-mates. You can see Sania Mirza on cloud nine after playing a perfect set of mixed doubles with Roger Federer, hugging Ana Ivanovic in her delight and beaming at her team-mates. And you can see Fabrice Santoro on his knees, his face serious as tries to inspire a trailing Pete Sampras.

And then there is the atmosphere. Two things contributed to the build-up of the atmosphere today. The first was the high bar set on Day 1 by the quality of the tennis and the thrilling last-minute finish in the second match. As if that wasn’t enough, there was the arrival of Roger Federer. If there was a sizeable crowd on the first day, there was an even bigger crowd today. And each and every one of them was in the grips of Federer fever.

The roar that greeted the announcement of his arrival nearly lifted the roof. And from a little boy in an “I <3 Federer” T-shirt to an old aunty in a silk saree carrying a poster of the legend, everyone ran down the stairs to be just that little bit closer to the man they were all there for. The sing-song chant of “Let’s go, Roger! Let’s go!” can be heard even on TV, yes. But only in a stadium can you feel the energy of the crowd’s voice.

Federer rocked the match by winning his three sets comprehensively, and kept the fans thoroughly engrossed in the action. The volume of the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ were in proportion to the pace and precision of the shots. At one point, even the linesman was caught looking at the replay of an entertaining doubles point that ended with Federer lobbing a shot over Hewitt’s head. The chair umpire had to call out thrice before the linesman realised that the clock was running down and he had to move into place for the serve. Catch that on TV if you can!

The rules and innovations in the ‘Happiness Open’ may have been made to make it more suitable for television. But when you bring together these many superstars and pit them against each other and add the fervour of team sports into this mix, it makes for compelling stadium viewing!