Un blogue de plus sur le tennis

In ancient Greek there were three words for "word": logos, ethos and mythos: mythos, the word "one should believe", the modern "narrative". It is always based on things Jung called "archetypal phenomena", "collective unconscious"; it is symbolic: a simple signifiant for a multi-layered signifié. This is, of course, not by chance. The false reality must always be simpler, sharper so that we can believe it: good against evil, beauty against the beast, fair against dark. A narrative is, by nature, a magical incantation: it is also a call to the fairy queen to make things happen. The way we watch tennis is shaped by big companies: the marketing people at IMG, Nike, know their jobs, and when they had the right occasion, they jumped all over it. Perhaps they got the idea from David Foster Wallace and his article,  Roger Federer as Religious Experience , a poetic text void of meaning, but probably not. And when Rafael Nadal stepped on the te...

Il y a quelques jours, dans une petite polémique sur twitter, j’avais écrit à Caleb que les statistiques, c’est bien, mais il y a aussi la mémoire. Pour avoir activement suivi la carrière de Novak Djoković les douze dernières années, je me rappelle beaucoup de choses qui n’ont pas eu droit à des titres dans les journaux, et qui se faufilent le profile bas dans les statistiques. J’ai décidé d’en faire le sujet d’une série d’articles, car verba volant, scripta manent , et les preuves, éparses, rassemblées par Cindy, Cristina, Jane, etc. méritent une nouvelle lumière, un éclairage plus intense. Mais avant d’entamer cette série – en anglais, honteusement – j’aurais un commentaire à faire sur l’émission « DIP impact » du 12 mars 2019, et les âneries proférées par mon journaliste préféré (dit sans cynisme aucun), Benoît Maylin, secondé abondamment par Cédric Pioline. D’abord, la vidéo est consultable en ligne, ici . On commence par le titre, qui souligne immédiatement qui sera le vilai...

In its farewell statement, the ATP stated: "Kermode's vision and leadership since 2014 has been instrumental in the creation of landmark new ATP events such as the award-winning Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan, as well as the upcoming ATP Cup in 2020." The trick words are, of course, "such as", because that's all that changed since... I do not clearly remember when. Could anybody tell me which are the other major ATP events created since 2014? The other trick, used in this delicious quote : "His six-year tenure at the helm of the ATP has seen record prize money and commercial growth for the organisation, while attendance and viewership of the ATP Tour has soared" is to make a causal connection where there is only a temporal one, because, meanwhile, indeed, tennis soared, but, as we can see from the attendance in IW in the last years, e.g., or this year Rotterdam, it is in no relations nor with Chris Kermode, nor with the participation of some well-kno...