At this point, you may be wondering why I care so much about a pair of obscure doubles specialists. When he's not playing tournaments, Eric Butorac coaches and hits with the Harvard tennis team, which I played on from 2008-2012. Therefore I became friends with Eric and was very lucky to receive some top notch doubles coaching from him. Circumstance had so far prevented me from watching any of his matches, but there was simply no way I was missing the final and Eric kindly invited me to sit in his player's box for tonight's showdown.
Wow, I was excited! I was feeling giddy all day and on the train ride to Melbourne I wanted to sing along to every word blasting from my iPod, although thankfully for the other passengers I limited myself to a bit of miming. The doubles final was scheduled to follow the Women's Singles final, so once inside the grounds I sat down to watch Li Na and Cibulkova on the big screen. As this game got underway, my excitement was quickly replaced by nerves. I hadn't felt so nervous in a long time. I just wanted Eric and his partner Raven to win so badly. Eric is an inspirational guy, as despite his humble college tennis background and lack of freakish talent he has enjoyed a successful career thanks to hard work, professionalism, and intelligence on the doubles court. Furthermore, Eric is just a super nice guy and I wanted nothing more than to see him take the title. The women's final couldn't end quickly enough, but the first set painfully dragged on for a whole hour. Butterfly stomached, I found myself unable to sit there and watch anymore so I retreated indoors to read Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Thankfully, the second set was 6-0 and moments later I was nervously making my way down to the Player's Box of Rod Laver Arena!
Many members of the crowd had disappointedly opted not to stick around for the doubles, but due to the sheer size of the stadium there were still a lot of people watching. Eric and Raven understandably started shakily and fell behind an early break. Meanwhile, their opponents - the 14th seeds Robert Lindstedt and Lukasz Kubot - were firing on all cylinders. In particular, the big Pole Kubot was dominating the court, crushing returns and smothering the net. He was more animal than man out there. Our boys lost the first set 6-3.
Buoyed by some strong support from the box, Eric and Raven were finding their range and played some great stuff in the second set. Serving down 3-2, Eric pulled out some huge serves to fend off several break points, which pumped up himself, his partner, and us in the box. The belief never wavered but neither did the form of Lindstedt/Kubot and they played a blinding game to break Raven and take a 5-3 lead in the second set. From 2010-2012, Lindstedt lost three consecutive Wimbledon doubles finals, so I desperately hoped memories of those defeats would haunt him as he served for the match. Actually, it was some excellent play from Butorac/Klaasen that led to a break-back point at 30-40. Raven hit a fine return and after a quick fire exchange he had a chance to win the point with a backhand volley, but he netted and two big serves later the match was over.
I was bitterly disappointed. Gutted in fact. It was all over so quickly. Nobody deserves to win a Slam more than Eric and his chance had just vanished. I had pictured wild celebrations in Melbourne throughout the night and instead I faced a dispirited run to Southern Cross Station to catch the last train back to Bendigo.
Come tomorrow I'll hopefully come to reflect on what a crazy experience it was and the one mile jog back home from Bendigo train station at 1.45am was pretty surreal in a 'how has my life to date culminated in this' sort of way.
Congratulations to Eric and Raven on an amazing tournament and hopefully they can build on this success and have a great season.
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