Sunday lessons at the Singapore Tennis Open: Faith, defiance, defeat, dignity

In the players’ lounge, late on the evening of Sept 27, an Australian portrait in grace. It’s barely an hour after the final, defeat barely digested, the bruises of disappointment still fresh, but Talia Gibson, just 22, is fine with another question. Sure. Go ahead. Ask. She admittedly didn’t play her best and yet this is a young woman at her best.

It’s been a rugged Singapore Tennis Open final, especially the first set, where the dynamic Leylah Fernandez breaks serve, then Gibson breaks back, then the Canadian breaks again, and the Australian breaks back. Tension slyly creeps into joints and overthinking impedes decision making.

So much is riding on every point. It’s Sunday, the big day, judgement day, examination day, the day everyone works for, the day which may not come again this year or even the next. People go a lifetime without playing a final and for both players this is validation for the millions of forehands hit, wake-up calls, sit-ups, ice baths, all the stuff no one sees but they know. 

This sport is impossibly hard, it’s wearying, on the brain, on the body, constant losses, fatigue, injury, reputations made but then form abruptly unravelling. There’s always someone faster, bigger, heftier, smarter, more consistent, and only one person can win on any given week.

“I mean, it’s tough,” said Fernandez after her 7-5, 6-0 victory. Losses are hard to wear and she admits she was a “cry baby” growing up. “So even now, I’m a little bit of a sore loser, but that also kind of drives my competitiveness. Not forget the losses, but to use it as fuel to keep training and to get back on court.

“For me every loss is a learning lesson and every win is also a learning lesson. My dad has always said from the very beginning, you win a match because of you, you lose a match because of you. And the very next day, you start from zero.”

On the WTA Ranking list, there are over 1,500 players and the competitiveness is thick and suffocating in every land. Yet even as players lose, hope remains their unbreakable thread. As Gibson, for whom this is a first WTA final, an impressive leap and proof of her labour, says: “You know, there’s always going to be another day, another match to play.”

Gibson has a set point in the first set. She has break points to make it 6-6 but can’t seize them. This is a crazy life, doing all your work on a thin tightrope, where the margins are so impossibly fine. And so of course players fall but that old warhorse, Jack Dempsey, long ago the heavyweight boxing champion, put it best: “A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.”

This year Gibson had a wonderful run in March at Indian Wells, from the qualifiers to the quarter-finals, beating Jasmine Paolini in the process. Next event, she had five remarkable wins in Miami and beat Naomi Osaka. Then she had a series of testing weeks, a string of losses in first rounds in tournaments, and yet here she is in September, in her first final. Dempsey would have liked her.

Players lean on belief, polish it with sweat, and carry it across borders. “I think in tennis,” said Gibson, “a good week is always around the corner.” Lounging in a sofa, her voice steady, she spoke of positives and learnings and it was something to behold.

“I deserve to be at the ranking (No. 63) that I am, you know, having the results that I’ve had this year. A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have fully believed that I’d be here today, but I think over time that’s just something that you keep working at.

“You keep dreaming, you keep having these goals and these things that you want to achieve.”

On the court earlier, the match over, Fernandez was dancing as Gibson quietly left the court. The spotlight every week in only large enough for one person in the end. The crowd was hollering and Singapore needs more live sport like this, more places for young people to come, to see striving from close up, to appreciate the precision of elite athletes, to see trophies chased defiantly, and to witness the collision of ambition yet also the exchange of respect.

“As much as we’re on our own journeys,” says Gibson, “we’re all on the same journey.

“You know, trying to do the same thing.”

Wearing defeat with dignity even as they ferociously chase silver.