Alexander Bublik spent the Laver Cup in London, in September, on Team World. They lost. He told Championat, on the sidelines of Almaty, that the two teams passed each other without speaking. He had criticised the event before going. He now finds it “absolutely magnificent”.
He says he talked with Andre Agassi and Pat Rafter. And Taylor Fritz coached him while he played. So nobody left the boy on his own, and that reassures me.
Two weeks later, he played Brandon Nakashima. He told him they already knew everything about each other.
I’m not criticising. I’m comparing. In Couvin, my aunt and the neighbour crossed paths in the square for thirty years without saying a word. A matter of a hedge. Every Sunday at Mass they sat two pews apart. My aunt knew what the neighbour put in her rice tart, what time she let the dog out, how many times she had repainted her shutters. The neighbour knew the same about her. They never spoke. There’s no need.
They call that a very sporting atmosphere now. The hedge, for its part, never won anything.
It’s true, we checked: We Love Tennis.
