tennis- live, broadcasted, transcribed

Here we are, in the heat of another Grand Slam, fourth round and counting. There's nothing like being several thousand miles removed, with only broadband and computer screens to connect you to the action at odd hours of the night, to make you yearn to be closer to the action. If watching tennis on TV is a sort of sacrilege, then watching tennis pixelate on the Internet is downright blasphemous. Is that Gael Monfils setting up a crazy shot, slamming it down the baseline and--oh, crap, my connection froze up again. Then it resumes movement and the players are pacing the courts, preparing calmly for the next point. Or there's Federer, advancing towards the net, reaching his racket between his legs, and--you get the picture. It's like listening to the world's most beautiful music on a radio signal that keeps fading in and out.
But if you can't afford a ticket to Australia, much less the cost of entry into the stadium, then TV/espn360 is your only option. So you deal with it. I console myself by watching it with hot cups of tea curled up in the purple dream sack on our sofa. I supplement my viewing experience with some reading, because I definitely believe you can gain a more varied perspective that way, too. I particularly like Forty Deuce for the latest tennis "news"...parody that rings dangerously close to truth. Then there's this article, by the late David Foster Wallace, that surely comes closest in aesthetic perfection to the live and in-person version of the game it describes. It's a great read, and still interesting and applicable nearly four years after publication. You get the feeling that a lot of what is typically written these days about Federer, Nadal, and tennis is lifted straight from this, the original. Give it a look-see between sets.