September 27th, 2009
On the Importance of Cojones and Luck and the Interwebs
On Monday of this week I had the good fortune of going to the Finals of the US Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium. This was a joyous occasion for multiple reasons. I was with my gal – @chakwave – which was a treat. It was my first time to the Open, which was great as the only reason we were able to go was due to the rain delay pushing the Men’s Finals from Sunday to Monday and so all the truly hard working stiffs who had schedules they were tied to were not able to attend the Finals but had to be at their desks/in their cars/on their phones. Their loss was our gain.
And of course this could not have happened without something as wonderfully democratic as StubHub that allowed me to find tickets that didn’t cost the proverbial arm and a leg. And the Stubhubbers were doubly awesome as they provided directions to find the tickets when we were lost wandering around Flushing Meadows.
Things were going along plainly enough as Federer was slicing and dicing Del Potro into tiny pieces and it seemed that we would have no problem making our 9:00 reservation at Pastis. But then the magical thing happened – well not so magical but just kind of a remarkable piece of humanity on parade. In the middle of the 2nd set when it could have been the beginning of the end for Del Potro he just clearly did a gut-check and said to himself, “If I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out swinging.”
And he did. He showed that he had the cojones to not only be on the same court as the most acclaimed tennis player of our time and possibly ever, but that he could win. And win going away. The lesson? That if you’re going to play. Play hard. You’ll look better winning or losing.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.