Marat at the Foro Italico

Always jarring to watch Italian Open matches staged at "marble stadium" at the Foro Italica in Rome, which of course was Mussolini's monument to his fascist ideal. Anyone who has seen Peter Greenaways interesting, artsy movie "In the Belly of an Architect" will recognize the location as the site that the nefarious Italian neo-fascist Caspasian is attempting to restore with money embezzled from a show of the work of Etienne-Louis Boulee. Weird place to see a tennis match, what with all the glistening marble, the simple bench seating, the statuary ringing the venue. Tennis is such an anti-fascist sport, so cosmopolitan, so dependent on the spirit of a enlightened, sporting, aristocratically inflected democracy that it's hard to see it played in the context of the Foro. It used to be said that all contemporary Italians must struggle with the legacy of fascism in their own way—this is a large theme in the films of Bertolucci and Pasolini—and I guess that continues to ring true, even if the format of the struggle is a mere Masters Cup tennis event.

At any rate, I watched Safin get knocked out in the second round by an unheralded Spanish qualifier. Haven't seen Marat play for some time, and it does appear that his assorted injuries and layoffs have messed up his game. The messed-up-ness is especially apparent on red clay, where his normally relentless and punishing power off the ground can't yield as many weak replies from opponents. A fading, out-of-shape Safin on red clay is the tennis equivalent of a bear wounded immediately after waking up from hibernation: grouchy, in pain, rarin' to fight but still groggy from the long winter's sleep. Not a pretty match, and exasperating for Safin-philes (count me as one), who had to watch their (our) man blow a 6-0, 4-1 lead to lose the last two sets in tie-breakers. As an aside, the red clay in Rome seems about as slow as a surface could be and not be made of molasses.

Of all the national tournaments, the Italian Open had often struck me as the strangest. There's a vague, displaced aspect to it. It's a big-deal event—both Nadal and Federer are in the draw, suggesting a rematch of Monte Carlo and yet another preview of the French Open final—but it "reads" small.

Blame Il Duce?