String Theory

5 ideas

1. Michael Joyce, ranked seventy-ninth, qualifying

   At the 1995 Canadian Open, Wallace followed Michael Joyce, then ranked 79th in the world, as he played through the qualifying rounds that top players skip. Joyce had given up schooling, a normal adolescence and most interests outside tennis to reach a level of skill almost no human attains. The result was near-anonymity, modest money and constant struggle just to enter main draws. The case shows the enormous gap between being among the best hundred at something and being famous for it.

2. Near-greatness demands total self-narrowing

   Elite skill at Joyce's level is not talent added to an ordinary life. It is bought by cutting away almost everything else a person could be, so the self is gradually built around a single capacity. Wallace calls this both admirable and grotesque: the same sacrifice that produces transcendence at the top produces something close to deformity just below it.

3. Television flattens what the body does

   Broadcast tennis is shot from high behind the baseline. That angle compresses depth and hides pace, spin and the geometry of the court, so pros look like they are playing an easy game. Only in person do you see the speed, and the physical intelligence needed to handle it. Mediated viewing systematically erases the difficulty that is the actual achievement.

4. The Federer Moment as kinetic beauty

   Wallace describes Federer's play as an instance of human beauty that reconciles people with having a body. His genius is that he seems to have more time than physics allows, because anticipation and perfect economy of motion slow the ball down for him. The 'religious experience' is watching the body's limits appear to be suspended by one person who inhabits them completely.

5. Genius athletes cannot articulate their genius

   Reviewing Tracy Austin's clichéd memoir, Wallace argues that great athletes can act without self-conscious thought under pressure. That same freedom from reflection is why they cannot describe the experience from inside. The blandness of sports memoirs is not a failure of candor. It is evidence of the very mental emptiness that made the performance possible.

Save and mark ideas in the app