Since it's too long, I'll do it by parts:
David Nalbandian. A legionary in search of his destiny.
From the international tennis circuit sumptuousness to the quietness of Unquillo in Cordoba, a hidden town in South America, David Nalbandian awaits the time of his defenite triumph. Implacable gladiator and pure cannibalistic appetite in the courts, the man who's a Davis Cup banner for Argentina, runs away from time to time from the vertigo and applausses to take refuge in his childhood.
Tennis has its artists and its gladiators. Roger Federer is an example of the first ones. If someone has brought near this sport to the art, that's the swiss, a man who plays like the gifted ones: he doesn't get tired, doesn't show emotions, doesn't sweat. The gods move their arms and regulate their emotions.
If Federer is a violinist, Nalbandian is a woodcutter.
His epic individualism is from someone that's axing his way through the circuit.
In that jungle that makes you tired which is tennis, you play a social darwinism a bit more sofisticated than it was with the first primates, but just as devastating. Here the battles are physical and mental. And they're not just the strength and the rage the ones with which you conquer the jungle: the mind is also there.
Tennis is somehow a fusion of chess and boxing: the power and the tecnic are ahead, but it's also indispensable the coldness to make a decision under pressure, the capacity to put up with abandonment and the frustration in those moments in which you're alone against the edge of destiny.
The boxercan feel fear and defend himself from that punches from fear. Make easier that desolation with more punches in the ring. The chess player, stunned, can retire. The tennis player, on the other side, can't do much to make his anguish easier. He can swear, he can destroy the racket, but he'll have to keep hitting the ball with the same precision, so the ball doesn't come back. He can't even go back to his chair and recieve the help from his coach or the word of a friend: he'll always be by his own, in a constant dialogue with his mind.
The perfection could be dangerous.
Sooner or later, the genious and the artists, end up paying with their bodies (and also with part of their soul) that heavenly wink which has made them trascendental.
A few months ago in Paris, during the last Roland Garros, Yannick Noah told me that to be a great tennis playeris necessary to be a little bit of a scoundrel. No sensitive boy can be a champion, observed: the dark hole of the circuit would crash him, would distroy his nerves.
At a first glance, Nalbandian doesn't seem like a scoundrel, but maybe he's trained well enough to manage himself with a minimum of tolerance and respect outside the court, and once inside, set free and release all that thearst of conquer his body trasures. The conquer spirit-that's how the History teaches it, it demands animosity, a reazonable animosity, it's understandable, but solid enough like to set battles free of five hours under a cruel sun.
That's Nalbandian: a misteriously hidden agressivity controlled which can take him to the glory, with pure animal instint, with the ferocity of a serial killer.
David Nalbandian. A legionary in search of his destiny.
From the international tennis circuit sumptuousness to the quietness of Unquillo in Cordoba, a hidden town in South America, David Nalbandian awaits the time of his defenite triumph. Implacable gladiator and pure cannibalistic appetite in the courts, the man who's a Davis Cup banner for Argentina, runs away from time to time from the vertigo and applausses to take refuge in his childhood.
Tennis has its artists and its gladiators. Roger Federer is an example of the first ones. If someone has brought near this sport to the art, that's the swiss, a man who plays like the gifted ones: he doesn't get tired, doesn't show emotions, doesn't sweat. The gods move their arms and regulate their emotions.
If Federer is a violinist, Nalbandian is a woodcutter.
His epic individualism is from someone that's axing his way through the circuit.
In that jungle that makes you tired which is tennis, you play a social darwinism a bit more sofisticated than it was with the first primates, but just as devastating. Here the battles are physical and mental. And they're not just the strength and the rage the ones with which you conquer the jungle: the mind is also there.
Tennis is somehow a fusion of chess and boxing: the power and the tecnic are ahead, but it's also indispensable the coldness to make a decision under pressure, the capacity to put up with abandonment and the frustration in those moments in which you're alone against the edge of destiny.
The boxercan feel fear and defend himself from that punches from fear. Make easier that desolation with more punches in the ring. The chess player, stunned, can retire. The tennis player, on the other side, can't do much to make his anguish easier. He can swear, he can destroy the racket, but he'll have to keep hitting the ball with the same precision, so the ball doesn't come back. He can't even go back to his chair and recieve the help from his coach or the word of a friend: he'll always be by his own, in a constant dialogue with his mind.
The perfection could be dangerous.
Sooner or later, the genious and the artists, end up paying with their bodies (and also with part of their soul) that heavenly wink which has made them trascendental.
A few months ago in Paris, during the last Roland Garros, Yannick Noah told me that to be a great tennis playeris necessary to be a little bit of a scoundrel. No sensitive boy can be a champion, observed: the dark hole of the circuit would crash him, would distroy his nerves.
At a first glance, Nalbandian doesn't seem like a scoundrel, but maybe he's trained well enough to manage himself with a minimum of tolerance and respect outside the court, and once inside, set free and release all that thearst of conquer his body trasures. The conquer spirit-that's how the History teaches it, it demands animosity, a reazonable animosity, it's understandable, but solid enough like to set battles free of five hours under a cruel sun.
That's Nalbandian: a misteriously hidden agressivity controlled which can take him to the glory, with pure animal instint, with the ferocity of a serial killer.