Sleepless Seeing Battles

As any serious tennis fan in a sensible timezone will tell you, January can be a difficult month.  You emerge from the long black tunnel of the December off-season, blinking into the light of Middle Eastern exos and a tennis overload from the other side of the world.  Having been deprived for so long, literally WEEKS, the temptation to over-indulge can be a difficult one to avoid.  This is when you find yourself awake at 3am watching Vesnina in Auckland and you're actually having fun.

However, by the time the Australian Open itself rolls around, the sleepless shenanigans begin to take their toll - just as the biggest endurance effort of all is required.  You approach this time with an unsettling combination of near hysterical excitement and lurking dread at the physical toll that will be exacted.

You know full well that you'll find yourself, within a few days, sleeping and eating at deeply inappropriate times - sometimes at the same time.  You'll be glued to your TV, tablet or other tennis source while the rest of your nation slumbers, watching something crazy unfold while mainlining artificial stimulants and trying to ignore that insistent feeling from your thalamus telling you that if you continue to ignore it, it will exact a painful revenge at a time of its choosing.  We all know that feeling, like someone attached a bowling ball to each eyelid and forming a cogent thought requires almost conscious manipulation of the appropriate axons and dendrites.  You type things that seem to make sense, but on later re-reading seem to have emerged from the imagination of David Lynch with a temperature of 104.  In short, the spirit is willing but the body is weak, and it gets worse with each passing year.

Yes, January is tough.  But is it worth it?

The thing with tennis is, there's nothing like watching it live - if not right there, then live on TV.  Especially these days when you can share the moment over the internet with fellow nutcases, the whole experience is elevated into a communal bonding experience.  Watching the reruns gives you the script, but it really only comes to its fullest life if you watch it in the moment.  So you might be awake at 4am and know that you still have a day's work ahead of you, but suck it up.  

In the first four days we've had Janowicz having a meltdown yet prevailing, we've had Lacko battle bravely before falling to Tipsarevic, we've had Monfils demonstrate his full repertoire of crazy in beating Lu 8-6 in the fifth.  We've seen Roger, Andy and Novak put on masterclasses of efficiency.  We've had the new Crown Prince, Tomic, talking a much better game than he's playing, but still winning.  We've had dreadfully compelling spectacles like Robson being less worse than Kvitova, 11-9 in the third.  We've had Serena dropping 2 games in 2 matches yet still providing enough drama to power a telenovela for 2 seasons.  

We've had the Shakespearean tragedy of Stosur's painful-but-inevitable fall into the pit she dug for her enemies.  Heather Watson showing that even with winning ugly there can be too much of a good thing.  Cibulkova losing to someone with even more obnoxious on-court behaviour than herself.  Sharapova selling sweets and playing sour.  We've even had Kuznetsova winning without drama; every type of human drama you can imagine has already been on display somewhere, on a showcourt, on an outside court, it's all going on.  It's a Grand Slam, baby, and there's nothing else like it.

So my advice to you?  Pop those matchsticks in the eye sockets, mainline caffeine, firmly sit on those strung out sensations, and give your cerebellum a good talking to.  We're not even halfway in yet and it's gonna get good.  Sleep is for the weak and we have 11 months to be weak in.  In January, we must be strong.  It's too much fun to miss.