Dig Out
“Victory belongs to the most tenacious.” —Roland Garros, WWI Aviator
Doors that aren’t closed are open. Even though they might look like they’re not. But what do you do with a sliver so slight that it mocks you in real time?
The answer is simple but not easy. Find a way to hang around.
This past week, professional sports gave us not one but two giant-stage thriller-come-from-behinds. In each, the latch was everything but bolted—until, of course, it wasn’t. With a gap the size of a hangnail, a trailer who refused to quit burst through. Both comebacks occurred on courts—one honey-blonde hardwood, the other red-terra cotta clay. Both featured evenly matched opponents who were the last ones standing in their respective sports’ competitive championships. Though one was an individual contest and the other was a team, both featured gritty prize-fighters who had earned the right to be there and had clearly made the decision not to go away.
In the first round of the NBA playoffs, the Indiana Pacers were outscored by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the opening quarter, then again in the second, and though they cut into the Thunder lead in the third, the fourth remained an uphill climb. But throughout the up and down of the game you could feel an uh-oh coming. Eventually, the Thunder lead was cut to 8. And then to 5. And then to 2 as the pesky Pacers kept chip-chip-chipping away. Then, in the final seconds when Shai Gilgeous Alexander missed his mid-range money-maker, Tyrese Halliburton stuck his foot in the crack of the door that had been left ajar. With .3 on the clock, the Pacers snatched their first and the only lead of the evening meeting that mattered. Rare though often rewarded are those who hang around.
A few days later in Paris at Roland Garros, the solitary tennis Grand Slam event played on sandy crushed brick, the men’s final took us on a similar ride. Italy’s Jannik Sinner, the number-one-ranked player in the world, jumped out to a two-set lead over Carlos Alcaraz, the world’s currently ranked number two. But Alcaraz, like a stray pup, continued to cling. After being down “double sets to a bagel” (in the words of the ever-clever tennis icon, John McEnroe), the young Spaniard clawed back (despite the betting odds of +5000) winning three breaks in the third to earn a fourth set. There, down 40-0 while dangling from the edge of the cliff by his toenails, he snatched an unlikely miscue from his all-but-crowned opponent to steady himself. Then, gradually, with stubborn awareness, unwavering self-belief and the kind of maniacal focus we pray our surgeon has, he opportunistically rose to tie things up in the fourth. Though Sinner roared back (again!) in the fifth with a refuse-to-lose fight of his own, Alcaraz dominated the tiebreak, ultimately claiming the Roland Garros title in the record-setting 5-hour-and-29-minute championship match.
It was comeback history on clay. Though the champion’s patented drop shot failed to fall early and often, and he found himself repeatedly in hole after hole after hole, Carlos Alcaraz kept on digging his way out.
Like the Pacer’s comeback vs. the Thunder, almost no one saw it coming yet everyone had a feeling that it could.
The truly tenacious don’t bow out. Even if the proverbial fat lady has warmed up and is opening her mouth to sing. On both courts this past weekend, the left-behind relentlessly tagged along. On high alert for implausible stumbles, the triumphant took shameless advantage of unexpected space.
It takes two to tango. A giver and a taker. And anything can happen if you can just keep hanging around.