Inside London's Dome With The Best Men In Tennis

London may be cold, grey and storm-ridden.
Parts of this wintry country may be submerged in floods from the heaviest rainfall since records began.

Yet the purple clouds that hang over one white dome crouched beside the steel-grey Thames prefigure a purple rectangle of delight nestled below.

For the best tennis players in the world have lit up the capital like a dose of sunshine.

What’s more, the closing finale of the men’s tour is threatening to put the green-and-white brilliance of Wimbledon in the shade.

Because amongst the eight elite men competing for the year-end title is a Brit.

London is holding its breath in the hope of a home champion.

Andy Murray: Great Expectations

Much has been made of the national burden of expectation on Murray’s shoulders. How amusing that, for the tennis-mad English, that hero should emerge, Braveheart-like, from across the Scottish border.

An entire country, therefore, adjusts from English to British and grudgingly accepts the dour Scot as one of its own.

It seems somehow appropriate that he is hard to warm to, sullen, passive aggressive, embodying every stereotype that the English can summon.

How admirable, then—and a measure of Murray’s character, talent, and graft—that the English now take him to their hearts as their home hero.

The Dome: Another Hero-In-Waiting

The Dome was to be London’s Millennium superstar.
It would host the most spectacular event in the country as 1999 turned into 2000. The big party was, after all, hosted by Prime Minister Tony Blair and Her Majesty the Queen.

But the cost of the venue, its far-from-show-stopping exhibition, and its infrastructure in this out-on-a-limb location got in the way of the British public’s imagination.

After Millennium fever was over, the Dome sank into near-oblivion.

The ugly duckling, though, turned into a swan when O2 had a moment of inspiration. London needed a charismatic arena—particularly during the temporary closure of Wembley—and the Dome, a beautiful white elephant, had the space to be just that.

The rest is history. The Dome has become the place to perform: for Prince and Springsteen, for Kylie and Led Zeppelin, and for Rafa and Roger.

And it is becoming the launch-pad for a new love affair between the British and tennis.

Murray and the Man-Mountain Open The Show

The inside of the arena is buzzing.

It is huge yet intimate. It has class and pizzazz in equal measure.

It has elements of Shanghai’s lightshow: an illuminated strip that circles the entire balcony front and shoots “ace” around the arena, or a thudding cardiogram at each “hawkeye” challenge.

The soundtrack ranges from The Stones to The Killers, Beyonce to The Clash—“London Calling,” of course! This is tennis unlike anything seen on British soil before.

The gun-metal grey court is surrounded by sky blue, which in turn is surrounded by blue borders and seating.

Perhaps it is chance that the first players to open the singles proceedings are in shades of blue, navy through to powder blue.

Juan Martin Del Potro came to London still carrying the pressure of his U.S. Open win on his C.V. and made a cold, awkward start against Murray.

The Argentine promptly had a nose-bleed and the doctor was called.

With the blood stemmed, he at last started to put up some resistance, firing off his trademark flat forehands to silence the home crowd.

Indeed, there was substantial support for Del Potro, or was it simply equivocal support for Murray?

The Scot appeared to take little joy from the standing ovation at his entrance, and precious little enthusiasm for his eventual win over the ill-at-ease Del Potro.

The crowd wants only a small sign from Murray to lift their mood. This place is packed to the brim and ready to roll!

Don’t Shout “Fire!”

The Dome is huge, but when the crowds have to descend to the outer ring between the day and night sessions, it becomes a disaster waiting to happen.

The “Entertainment Avenue” is lined with restaurants, bars, a funfair, a show court, a cinema, and much else.

Queues block every square inch and the throng becomes a single immobile, irritable mass.

The only escape is the entrance foyer, and that takes almost half an hour to reach. Once there, it is cold and completely devoid of seating.

The only “fast food” is back in the brightly-lit distant inner circle, and that is cleared between sessions.

So where can all-day visitors go between in the late afternoon and early evening? Unless they want to join one of the restaurant queues, nowhere.

An Oasis In A Frantic World

As soon as the doors to the arena are open, its inner sanctum beckons anyone seeking some respite from the shoulder-to-shoulder hubbub.

Some easy food, a glass of wine, enjoyed in a comfortable seat inside the now empty and peaceful arena.

The evening doubles was not due to begin for another hour, but to fill the time, there was an altogether better class of light entertainment in the form of Roger Federer.

He was using this quiet half-hour to warm up with the ever-beaming Greg Rusedski.

Few men can carry off a salmon-pink tee: somehow Federer did.

A Lesson for New York: the Viewer Experience

The O2 seats, unlike in most sporting venues, are padded. This place has the comfort of a theater.

A £40 seat is just five rows back from the court’s edge, within chatting distance of the players’ support teams.

The arena is like a U-shaped valley, becoming steeper as the edges rise, yet the top seats, though precipitous, are less distant than Flushing Meadow’s nether reaches, and have unimpeded eye-lines. The view is excellent from almost every position.

The acoustics, too, are perfect. Every sound is pin-sharp, from a Federer growl at a dodgy line call to a little prompt from Murray’s team to “move him around.”

A Lesson from New York: That End-of-Night Panic

Will I or won’t I make the last tube train?
Will this three-setter be one of those long, intense battles that goes all the way to three hours?

The tennis-lover wishes for just such a match, but the commuter facing a two-and-a-half hour journey home in the early hours has a real need to catch that last train.

The temptation, therefore, is to creep out with just five minutes to go to beat the crowds. The heart, though, wants to stay in case of a last-minute drama.

The former option was taken when Novak Djokovic appeared to have his first match all sown up. But the news on the train out of London over an hour later revealed that Nikolay Davydenko had fought back in the final set, losing it 7-5.

In New York, the crowd can confidently stay to the end, no matter how late. In London, the transport network gradually grinds to a halt after midnight.

There is no better way to drain the joy from a great night of entertainment than the experience of frantic crowds bottle-necked into a tube station for fear of being stranded in this infrastructure black hole.

But This Is What It’s All About: The Combat

Each of the top players took a while to find their groove.

The court was new and unused, the bounce was low, and the surface of average pace.

Little wonder, then, that the top four men all lost a set in their opening matches. More of a surprise was that Rafael Nadal failed to win a set at all against Robin Soderling.

In a reprise of their Roland Garros encounter, Soderling came out with all guns blazing—the serve and the flat forehand—and had Nadal on the back foot almost immediately.

A further surprise was the amount of, albeit low-key, support for the Swede. The atmosphere between the two men seemed edgy, and the crowd sensed the tension.

Rapturous support for Nadal alternated with an undercurrent of encouragement for Soderling, who clearly became increasingly irritated by the time Nadal took to change ends and to serve.

The mood on court, the partisan crowd alongside, and the unexpected direction of the game: it was a recipe for gripping tennis.

But This Is What It’s All About: The Tennis

The contrast between Djokovic and Davydenko could not be greater.

Djokovic, all bravado and swagger, strode onto court to a cheering welcome in hot red shirt and dazzling red shoes.

Davydenko, in his usual dull and ill-fitting kit, walked on to muted applause.

For a man taking part in his fifth year-end event, the Russian is little known, and even less appreciated, on many of the world’s tennis courts.

The crowd in London was swiftly reminded of just why he has been in the elite group for so long.

The match was a repeat of last year’s Masters final, and it confirmed that these were the in-form players of the moment.

Both came to London with recent Masters titles and playing their best tennis of the season.

Both were firing on all cylinders. Both played fast, energetic and top-notch tennis.

It became a battle of fitness and nerve, as both hurtled from side to side of their baselines, hitting and retrieving bullet-fast shots from the other.

The momentum shifted between the first and second sets, then again half way through the third set, building up the tension and the crowd’s support.

As in Shanghai 2008, Djokovic got the win, just. But London discovered the tennis of a quiet Russian.

But This Is What It’s All About: The Players

Federer is used to receiving near-total support from crowds wherever he plays. But the London audience for his opener against Fernando Verdasco was a little less certain.

Spanish flags flew brightly and the hearts of female spectators beat just a little faster with the arrival of tennis’s smoldering pin-up.

The crowd was even more nonplussed when Verdasco got off to a racing start against an error-strewn Federer.

Suddenly the favorite was a set down and looking decidedly below par.

And that is when the anxious support kicked in. London had come to watch Federer magic, and they cheered him on until they got it.

The sleeping lion appeared to wake up during the second set, and clawed his way back to even terms.

Against Federer and his adoring fans, even the passion of the Spanish support was not enough, and Verdasco’s errors gave yet more fire-power to Federer.

The match ended just as each of their previous ones had done: Federer the winner.

These two men play very differently. One is right-handed, the other left. One is an all-court exponent, the other prefers the baseline.

One is all touch and craft, the other is all-out power. Fire and ice, Spanish and Swiss.

But both have that happy knack of drawing attention. Their tennis and their looks are the starting point for that attention.

Off court, though, both are articulate, charming, and approachable individuals, and that doesn’t do tennis any harm at all.