Rambetti hit an ace.Fifteen-Love.
Come on, Marcus, I silently tried to convey to him using the ancient art of telepathy.Don’t give up.
The next point was better – a not great serve, an excellent return, a slice to Marcus’s backhand, a winner down the line. Marcus’s point.Fifteen-All.
After Rambetti won the next point, the crowd went wild.Thirty-Fifteen.Apparently Court Rainier III could seat ten thousand, and it felt as though at least nine thousand of those were on their feet, yelling for their countryman, willing him to win. Marcus sneered at them, putting his fingers together to make a ‘blah-blah’ gesture resulting in an even louder set of boos that went on and on.
‘Code violation, unsportsmanlike conduct,’ announced the umpire into his microphone. ‘Point penalty, Forty-Fifteen.’
Marcus, who had been preparing to receive Rambetti’s serve, stood up straight.
‘What?!’ he said to the umpire, approaching his chair. ‘For what?’
I felt slightly sick. I really wasn’t a fan of confrontation, and yet here was Marcus wading right in and asking for it, with an audience of braying Italians watching his every move. Aware that there might be a camera lurking somewhere, I tried to keep my face neutral, like I’d seen the real WAGS do.
‘Because you told the crowd to be quiet and made a rude gesture,’ said the umpire.
Marcus wasn’t having any of it. ‘How is what I did rude? If I’d sworn at them – which, honestly, they deserved – fine, I’d accept the violation, but this makes no sense!’
‘Violation stands, Forty-Fifteen,’ said the umpire, clearly unable to go back on his decision now, even if he’d wanted to.
‘This is fucking ridiculous!’ said Marcus, shaking his head and stomping back to his place.
‘He will get another one if he does not stay quiet,’ said Patrick.
‘Marcus, come on, man!’ shouted Dean.
To be honest, I felt like going down there myself and telling Marcus to stop. What was he doing? What was he hoping to achieve? He had one measly point left to turn this game around – did he really think he could play his absolute best tennis now?
Marcus took his place for Rambetti’s serve, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it, and Rambetti outplayed him.
Game, Set and Match, Federico Rambetti.
I clapped half-heartedly as Marcus shook hands with Rambetti at the net. I felt bad for him but also thrown by witnessing his racquet smashing play out live and in real time. Perhaps the fear of losing helped some players to dig deep and pull something spectacular out of the bag, but for Marcus it seemed that thinking he’d blown it sent him spiralling off in a dark direction he was always going to struggle to come back from. At some point I would ask him what was going through his head at times like that, but I was definitely going to have to pick my moment with extreme caution.
A disappointed silence hung over our box as Marcus packed up his stuff and disappeared into the tunnel, and the cameras were set up for Rambetti’s interview.
‘Has he always lost his temper like that?’ I asked Patrick.
Patrick shook his head. ‘When he was younger, no. I’d say the last seven years. Since the year after he won the Australian Open – he went into the tournament a favourite and got knocked out in the first round by a guy ranked two hundred and fourth in the world. After that his mood and his confidence deteriorated more and more, although of course I was not coaching him then.’
‘Why do you think he hasn’t won a Grand Slam again?’
‘It is a lot of things combined,’ said Patrick, standing up wearily. ‘And this attitude of his does nothing to help.’
As we left our seats to return to the players’ area, Dean turned to me with a grim expression on his face.
‘Ava, I’m gonna need you on board. We’ve got some fucking damage control to do.’
The ‘damage control’ apparently consisted of me leaving the grounds with Marcus in the hope that media speculation about our relationship would supersede the negative press about his on-court meltdown. I agreed to do it because I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to, and also I thought it might be useful for the article to be alone in a car with him minutes after he’d crashed out of a tournament far earlier than expected. I knew clay wasn’t his best surface, but it was clear he’d been hoping to get to the semis at the very least. I doubted he’d want to talk about it, but maybe I could pick something up that I could build on later.
I waited for him in the players’ area while he had his ice bath and post-match talk with Patrick, who hadn’t looked happy either. I wasn’t sure if it was the tennis or the behaviour that hadn’t pleased him, but I had the feeling he was going to tell Marcus exactly what he thought either way.
After a considerable amount of time, during which I took advantage of the free hot drinks in the players’ lounge by ordering not one but two cappuccinos, Marcus finally appeared, his hair wet from the shower, his Lacoste tracksuit zipped up to the neck, his white Monte-Carlo Country Club cap pulled down so that it was hiding a large portion of his face, his expression darker than dark. The racquet bag, as ever, was on his shoulder and his water bottle was clutched in his hand, since presumably his body was in desperate need of rehydration. I’d read that apparently tennis was one of the most physical sports because you used almost every muscle in your body and also because the games could go on for so damn long. I was already dreading Roland-Garros, where I might haveto watch a five-hour extravaganza. Just as well I was understanding the game a little more, and was just the tiniest bit more invested in Marcus winning. After all, he was far more likely to be an amenable interviewee if he was in a good mood, wasn’t he?
‘Hey,’ I said to him, giving him a half-smile.
He nodded at me, barely making eye contact. ‘Ready to go?’
