Tennis: The alchemy of a bagel

If the bagel works for you early in the day, it means that you have acquired a taste for the unicellular fungi that feast on the wheat to leaven the bread that is made out of the dough – boiled and baked into a tasty bite, crispy on the surface and chewy inside. Not that a tennis player cares about the chemistry so long as she isn’t at the receiving end of one. Since one of the players is blanked, a typical bagel in tennis rarely lasts no longer than the time it might take you to bake one at home. It is a bitter sweet recipe that brings joy to host and pain to the served – hurting the ego in a very demonstrative manner. However, there was one on Tuesday that defied the normative rules of a bagel. In the absence of adequate data, one can only wonder if there were a longer bagel set in the history of the game; but the undulating first set between Nikolay Davydenko and Janko Tipsarevic showcased the gloom of the sufferer against the backdrop of a brightly lit show court at the Dubai Tennis Stadium.

Nikolay Davydenko served up a bagel to Janko Tipsarevic in the ongoing Dubai Open

Dubai was witness to perhaps the most deceptively scripted bagel in recent memory. The Russian and Serbian went toe-to-toe in a blistering display of despondent, error-riddled tennis that saw the game swing from one man to the other, the resolution seemingly out of sight. The first game between the two men lasted as many as 14 minutes and 24 points – ten deuces and seven break points on the Davydenko serve brought the stadium to life with the evening still very young. It was as if these two players of pedigree had forgotten what it is like to find two straight winners even as the sparse crowd lapped up the error-stricken excitement.

The second game outdid the first – lasting 26 points and 17 minutes, the game produced eleven deuces and another six break points before Davydenko drove away to a 2-0 lead just as the clock ticked past the half hour mark. It was an exhibition of errors between two professional players who seemed to have left their muscle memory in the locker room. Not a soul could have smelt the bagel in the oven though, because neither man seemed capable of it. Suddenly though, in the space of just 13 points, the 31-year-old Davydenko leapt ahead to lead 5-0 including a hold to love. Tipsarevic had an opportunity to redeem himself at 40-15 in the next game, but then the Serbian was struggling again to finish the job.

As the game drew into a fifth deuce, Davydenko found a backhand return winner – the first real moment of brilliance in the match. At this opportune juncture, the net decided it was enough and chose to intervene. It picked on a powerful Tipsarevic shot, just as it crossed over and dropped it gently over on the other side for Davydenko to step in and complete the humiliation for the stricken Serbian. In this event, it did not matter that the second set of 12 games took almost the same time as the six game first – Davydenko overcame a double break deficit to reel back Tipsarevic and take the match 6-0, 7-5. It was perhaps the psychological scar of the bagel that did the Serbian in at the end.

The bagel had taken 51 minutes – that is 19 minutes longer than it took Steffi Graf to take the French Open title in 1988 against the hapless Natasha Zvereva who succumbed to a double bagel. Watching the first two games of this encounter between Davydenko and Tipsarevic, it felt probable that the duo might emulate the epic effort of Keith Glass and Anthony Fawcett in 1975 when they conjured enough means to prolong their game to 37 deuces – Glass eventually served out the game, in what Bud Collins reckons was about 31 minutes. Fawcett won the match eventually, but Glass has the consolation of being part of the longest game in tennis history. One wonders if the bagel that lasted 51 minutes in the Dubai desert was indeed the longest it took to complete one.

Roger Federer holds the record for serving the maximum number of bagels – 77

Incidentally, this was the 50th bagel for Nikolay Davydenko who is right up there with the best in the business in serving out those dreaded dough rings to their opponents. Roger Federer leads the chart with 77, followed by Rafael Nadal at 62. Lleyton Hewitt has 50 too, including the temerity to hand one to Pete Sampras at the Tennis Masters Cup in 2000. David Ferrer completed his set of 50 when he handed one to Hewitt at the US Open last year. Novak Djokovic is seeking his 50th bagel and came very close to getting one at the Australian Open – he served up five breadsticks, so the victim is still in the making.

You can count on the world No.1 to complete the half century during the current season. Irrespective of who bagels who, the one thing that is certain is that the recipient shall suffer having to walk past the locker room with the dough ring hanging to the ear before he or she can wash down the trauma with a decent drink. It is indeed tennis’s version of humiliating a player by disrobing them layer by layer.