A common refrain you’ll hear during a tennis match is “quiet, please.” It’s what starts a set and stops most yapping. The rule, even when unspoken, is what governs spectators. It liberates the players too: that absence of sound can open the door to a cosmic kind of athleticism, where a stream of rapid-fire micro-decisions leads to the most gravity-defying plays.
I’m told that most tennis players don’t expect much disruption this time of year – that they expect Canadians to be reserved and quiet during matches. Maybe our reputation precedes us because it suffers from comparison to the US or the UK. Maybe it’s because in tennis, we’re not used to winning as much. Whatever the assumptions or reasons, I still find this to be untrue, especially when a Canadian tennis player is out on the court. From what I’ve seen, that’s all it takes for the national pride and heckling to come out. The crowds are anything but quiet. And tonight I’m proven right by thousands of shrieking fans in Toronto Sobey’s Stadium. It’s the men’s final, and Karen Khachanov is trying to serve. His opponent, Ben Shelton, keeps asking what’s going on. Whether it’s because he’s tired of repeating himself or getting drowned out, he’ll walk up to the chair umpire — the one person who can tame this crowd with a quiet, please — for an answer. The umpire, who knows he can’t compete with the uproar, will simply explain the cause of it all. “I guess the Canadian player won in Montreal,” is what he says. And while I can’t make out Shelton’s response, what he does right after says enough. He nods and returns to the baseline to wait out the frenzy. He’s trying to win his first career title tonight too.