This article comes from ZEIT No. 06/2024. You can read the entire issue here.
Half a world away from here, a little drama took place in tennis last weekend. Daniil Medvedev is one of the five best tennis players in the world. He was in the final of the Australian Open on Sunday. He led 2-0 sets, just like he did in 2022, and he lost in the end, just like he did in 2022.
If you saw him, at first glance you wouldn’t think he was a tennis player. More likely for a math professor or a chess grandmaster. That’s exactly how he plays. He dismantles his opponents, move by move, using the entire geometry of a tennis court. Equipped with squid-like tentacles instead of normal human limbs, he hits the tennis balls at angles that make the opponent painfully aware of how big a tennis court can be.
The problem: Calculating the duration of all moves in advance uses a lot of energy. Chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories in a day. And tennis is chess in a constant sprint. At least if you do it like Daniil Medvedev. His energy was used up after two sentences and Jannik Sinner on the other side suddenly woke up. The tragedy began.
Jannik Sinner is a freckled Italian with red curls. He is also a Gucci model and Parmesan brand ambassador. Which would be enough for a single life – but he is also a fantastic tennis player and the next big star in the tennis sky. The stars there often burn out again quickly. Does red hair glow longer?
As a South Tyrolean, Sinner speaks German with a sweet Italian accent, and when he laughs at you with his tiny gap in his teeth, you blush a little. However, he did not defeat mathematics professor Daniil Medvedev. No, he needed the full swing of his crashing forehand and the skier’s legs to generate and then absorb this momentum. By the way, the last red-haired winner of the Australian Open was Boris Becker.
Half a world away from here, a little drama took place in tennis last weekend. Daniil Medvedev is one of the five best tennis players in the world. He was in the final of the Australian Open on Sunday. He led 2-0 sets, just like he did in 2022, and he lost in the end, just like he did in 2022.
If you saw him, at first glance you wouldn’t think he was a tennis player. More likely for a math professor or a chess grandmaster. That’s exactly how he plays. He dismantles his opponents, move by move, using the entire geometry of a tennis court. Equipped with squid-like tentacles instead of normal human limbs, he hits the tennis balls at angles that make the opponent painfully aware of how big a tennis court can be.
