On-Court Discourtesy

It's clear to me that I don't have the expertise to write about psychology or sports psychology in a clinical way, but I think if these disciplines are to be valuable, it's important that they make sense to everyone. A few years ago there was a movement in the Law to make legal writing comprehensible for a broad population whom it affected, and I felt that was a big step forward. So here goes.

Naomi Osaka, in the final of the Montreal tennis championship, behaved badly, during the game, and also at the awards ceremony. She is a former champion who has recently returned to competitive play following treatment for depression and a maternity leave.

She is highly skilled and very accomplished in tennis, and at the Montreal competition, she easily played her way to the final, which was against an 18-year old Canadian competitor, Victoria Mboko.

I am 69 years old, and tennis competition and tennis fans have changed considerably over my time watching and enjoying the sport. When I was a boy, the most important tournaments were open only to amateurs. Then there came a year when, faced with the prospect of many professionals being absent from those tournaments because they were earning money in the sport as professionals, Wimbeldon and other tournaments allowed professionals to compete. In recent years tennis has become a very lucrative sport for the few players who make their way to the top.

The spectators, at least those attending the events in person, changed at about the same time. For example, at Wimbledon and elsewhere, it was considered rude, and almost unheard of, for a spectator to applaud an unforced error. There was a certain sense to this. After all, what is there to applaud when someone makes a mistake? A point that is won with a good shot is something to be admired, but an unforced error? Not really? So the Wimbledon etiquette was clear--do not applaud an unforced error.

But with broader audiences, that etiquette went out the window along with bell bottom pants. Oh, for a couple of years, tennis snobs like me would sneer at the ignorance of error applauders, but those days are long gone. Now spectators cheer for the champion, applaud ever point that their favorite wins, whether the point is won by a player's skill, or just by an opponent's lapse.

Sometimes the spectators are divided equally between the players they cheer for, and at other times, all of them can be on one side. This happens, for example, when there is a "hometown favorite." So Mboko, a Canadian player competing in Montreal, had the whole crowd on her side. And that crowd vigorously applauded every one of Osaka's unforced errors during the final match. It is not the first time there has been such hometown favoritism and it certainly will not be the last. Osaka must have understood this. Certainly she has faced it before, for example in her American match against hometown favorite Serena Williams, which Osaka won.

Yet however yobbish we have become as spectators, we expect good sportsmanship from the players, and we do not always see it. Whether it was John McEnroe arguing with the umpires and linesmen and breaking his racket, or Serena Williams threatening on the air to jam her racket down a lineswoman's throat, we do not always see good sportsmanship.

It rankles us especially, I think, because elite tennis players are very privileged in their material circumstances and careers. Prize money for winning a major tournament awards the victor with millions of dollars. Also many of us grew up with basic norms and rules of comportment and do not like to see them breached.

So what went on in Montreal, and why the fuss? The camera showed us many closeups of Osaka's face, and we saw expressions that ranged from sullen to downright angry. Her mood deteriorated as she fell behind in the second set, and ultimately lost the match. At one point she fired a ball deliberately into the spectators. She was fined for that. It is a dangerous gesture, completely unjustifiable. What was the reason? Frustration with her play? I think it was more anger against an audience that was applauding her every error. And there were a lot of errors on both sides: double faults, missed and weak shots--a lot of errors made by both players.

Anger against the audience because she calculated that their partisanship was affecting her game. The composer-pianists Franz Liszt and Chopin both played a great many recitals to promote their music. Chopin remarked to Liszt that he, Chopin, wilted when the audience failed to support his playing, whereas Liszt just "beat them over the head."

So reaction to a hostile audience is not uniform. Some people have more trouble with it than others. How much trouble did Osaka have with the Canadians who were so invested in her opponent's victory? Quite a bit, apparently. The shot into the stands was a counter-attack, a physical expression of the anger she felt against a hostile crowd.

Then there was the awards ceremony. Traditionally the runner-up (in this case Osaka) congratulates the champion, whether she means it or not. The congratulations and politeness are simply expected. This goes along with the rewards to, and lifestyle of, the players. As runner-up in this competition, Osaka received hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money, added to a staggering total she has earned over her career, not to mention the lucrative endorsments.

Most of us, therefore, think that someone who enjoys such rich remuneration could swallow her upset at being defeated by a hometown faorite, and behave graciously, even if she wasn't feeling that. Instead, Osaka thanked the volunteers and officials, and said she hoped they had a good day. To her opponent, and to the excited fans who had just watched their champion have a breakthrough performance, not a word.

Osaka behaved rudely to say the least, and this has been the subject of commentary in the press, and among tennis fans at large. Some think Osaka is simply spoiled. She should try living in Ukraine for a week, one player at my club remarked. Comparisons are inevitable, a tennis champion's material circumstances and working conditions being enviable. Another player said that if she were her mother, Osaka would never step on a court again. Politeness is greatly appreciated at my club, rudeness condemned.

I myself, besides calling the behaviour rude, am thinking about her depression. In her response to the criticism of her behaviour, Osaka has issued a compliment to Mboko, and she has offered the excuse that she was "in a daze."

Some of us will say that is a feeble excuse, but what if she was in a daze? I think the technical term for that would be dissociation, or dissociative state, in which her mind was somewhere else, not tuned in to the moment. I can imagine that anger towards a shamelessly partisan crowd could lead to dissociation, as a kind of protection for her feelings.

Is all of these related to her depression, and what kind of depression is it? The public remains woefully uninformed about depression, and, from my armchair, I do not think it can be said that there has been much progress in understanding or treating depression since since the foundationlal essay of Freud on 'Melancolia.'

Yes there are drugs, antidepressants. The most commonly prescribed class is proven to be effective for half of the patients who take it, and when it works, it improves conditions for only two years. That can hardly be called a successful medication.

The population at large has a fear of counselling, even today. People who suffer devastating losses (death of a loved one, divorce) stubbornly refuse to talk to professionals.

Depression is broadly understood to relate to loss, but very few know about the field of thanatology, which studies grief and loss. How many cases of drug-resistant depression would be better addressed through the thanatological model of chronic sadness? We are a long way from knowing that. There are few thanatologists, and the discipline gets no respect from doctors, or is completely unknown to them.

And there is the mysterious (to most of us) condition called post-partum depression, which has caused some women to do extreme, unimaginable things. If Naomi Osaka were suffering from that dangerous condition, would we know? Would she know? If she or her doctor knew, would anyone tell the world? Would they be too ashamed to say so?

I found her behaviour to be rude and agressive. Dare I say unladylike? I certainly have criticized male players for being ungentlemanly. Perhaps I ought just to call it poor sportsmanship and leave it at that, but I am very curious to know what is behind an overt attack against a partisan crowd, when Osaka has been in that situation many times before, and such a display of rudeness, when a word or two encouraging a young player would have sufficed. And I earnestly hope that someone will address her depression competently. And I hope she will recover quickly, definitively, and permanently.