Mariana Enriquez is not only a hugely successful novelist and one of the leading figures in horror literature over the past decade; she’s also a passionate tennis fan with sharp opinions: “Tennis fans are very authoritarian, and they get upset when players show their personality.”
In this interview with CLAY, Enriquez explores her passion for tennis through critiques and profound insights: the unusual hatred Novak Djokovic provokes, the impact Roger Federer had on the sport with his gentlemanly image, and the reasons why women’s tennis doesn’t attract the same attention as it once did.
“Djokovic, coming from a country without a tennis tradition, emerges at a time when there’s already an iconic rivalry. That’s how he becomes this hated figure. It’s such a strange logic. A lot of people also started disliking him over the whole vaccine issue, but then you have Alexander Zverev, who just settled a domestic violence case by paying money, and no one says anything,” the Argentine writer comments to CLAY.
The author of the best selling novel Our Share of Night also reflected on how lightly the ATP portrays its stars on social media: “They show the players being all funny, treating them like kids instead of conducting good interviews; there’s a lack of depth. The content feels very juvenile.”
Interview with Mariana Enriquez
– You come across as a tennis fan, yet people rarely ask you about it. Why do you think that is?
– Literary journalists don’t know much about sport. There’s very little overlap, and when there is, it’s usually with football. Even among the most prestigious writers, the intersection is minimal—apart from the solitary example of Roberto Bolaño, in just one story (Buba, from the book Putas Asesinas). So I think there’s a kind of disconnection between fiction and sport. There’s a lot more essays or biographies, like David Foster Wallace’s piece on Federer (Roger Federer as Religious Experience). I think that made Federer fans out of many people who previously didn’t care for tennis. The only sport that really works well in fiction is boxing.
– Why?
– The narrative around football is very fragmented unless it revolves around a single person. It’s like a strange kind of epic. There are good works, like El Partido by Andrés Burgo, which chronicles the Argentina-England match in 1986, but that’s also about a very particular, highly political match steeped in Maradona mythology. Boxing, on the other hand, has a very masculine traditional narrative—about struggle, about war.
– Doesn’t tennis tradition help in creating compelling stories?
– Tennis’ deeply aristocratic origins are a problem, because for that, you’d need a great British writer like Evelyn Waugh. Another issue is who plays the sport. Novak Djokovic often points out that very few people can actually make a living from tennis. So you don’t get stories like Capitanes de la Arena by Jorge Amado—about poor, gang-like Brazilian boys who live on the beach and play football. Stories like Romário’s or Garrincha’s. Tennis doesn’t have that. It’s also a sport that doesn’t allow much to be shown, unlike football, where all the players’ flaws are on display for everyone to see. I’ve always liked Andre Agassi because he broke the mould in a fairly dull era personality-wise, but later, with Open, you realise everything that was going on beneath the surface.
– Has it always been like this?
– During the golden era, it was more visible. Here in Argentina, we remember Guillermo Vilas very well—he was a playboy who recorded music albums and all that. He wasn’t a man with a wild lifestyle like Maradona; he was very proper, but also a bit of a dandy. Being a dandy while obsessively dedicated to tennis made him a fascinating character. That generation was very charismatic. But over time, the emphasis on good behaviour and the highly disciplined idea of tennis started changing things. The expectation of behaving in a certain way on the court has made players a bit robotic.
– What do fans prefer? The well-behaved player, or the one who puts on a show with tantrums?
– Tennis fans are very authoritarian, and they tend to get upset when players show a bit of personality. Daniil Medvedev is the funniest guy on the tour, and when he has his episodes, people call him a spoiled brat. What’s wrong with that? He’s annoyed because a ball was called out incorrectly. There’s something, which isn’t Federer’s fault, but it’s what I call the ‘Federer Effect’—this idea of the ‘gentleman tennis player’ that already existed in a duller form with Pete Sampras. Many people demand that kind of good behaviour. At first, Federer didn’t have it; he had his tantrums, but then he calmed down. He was winning everything, had the crowd on his side—what was there to be angry about?
– Has tennis been wasted in the world of literature?
– I think so. To give an example, there is no good biography of Vilas. After his dandy period, his life continued to be interesting once he retired, and today he is suffering from a very serious neurocognitive problem. He was forgetting everything and all he wanted was to be recognised as number one. That’s a dramatic story and there’s a documentary that’s good, but it doesn’t live up to what he deserves. Agassi’s book ended up being a bomb and a bestseller all over the world, even in countries where Agassi is not a superstar, because it’s a great book, it’s a lesson on what it’s like to be a top athlete. He vented things from the ATP and also from his own childhood; the difficulties that geniuses face. It’s a horror movie.
– Missing bibliography…
– The story of Monica Seles! Never in history has a guy walked onto a court and stabbed the best player in the world. It is impressive that such an event isn´t more present in the culture and that it is still so taboo. And just as it happens with many other things, of course it’s wasted. It’s a missing narrative to be put together, because even from the biographical point of view there isn’t much. I was in Italy and there are already like three books about Jannik Sinner. They are crazy about him there. They are instant books, which are made for the moment. I looked them over because Sinner is a character I’m not interested in, but the guy is 22 years old with a career ahead of him, without much of a past.
(Author’s note: the interview with Mariana Enriquez was conducted before Sinner´s positive doping case became public).
– What other recent moment was missed?
– During the pandemic, there were some literary high points, like when the Adria Tour was held. That looked like Zoolander, I always think. In the middle of the crisis, these guys decided to put on a tournament, go to a nightclub, take off their shirts (and dance on the stage). It wasn’t just Djokovic, it was Dimitrov, Zverev, Rublev. Dimitrov later got COVID and posted it on Instagram. It was total madness. They were daring, they were crazy, but for a writer who thinks narratively, seeing them in a nightclub during the pandemic is gold.
Djokovic Salió positivo en Coronavirus. El N°1 del ranking ATP dio positivo tras jugar el monitorneo Adria Tour en Serbia y Croacia y con estos festejos🤦🏽♀️ pic.twitter.com/EfbzEN1A4L
— Georgina Holguin 💙 (@GeorginaHolguin) June 23, 2020
– Do you plan to write about tennis?
– About this, I don’t exclude myself. What happens with tennis is that when you don’t play it, there’s a serious condemnation for those who don’t know the technique. If I write an article and accidentally mix up the name of a stroke, everything would collapse very quickly. That generally paralyses you a bit, but that kind of discipline is very deceptive because I don’t want to talk about technical things. When I wrote about Andrey Rublev, I was interested in talking about mental health, which is something very important to me. Rublev once said in a press conference, “This time at least I didn’t hear the voice telling me, ‘kill yourself'”… What the hell is that? Or Nick Kyrgios, who is more eloquent when speaking, saying he had taken drugs, that he had harmed himself. There are many things in tennis that make it difficult to get there. One of them is the ATP content videos showing them all being funny, treating them like kids instead of conducting a good interview.
– There’s a lack of depth.
– Yes. I don’t think it’s wrong to create content, but the content they produce is very naïve. In one of these videos, they asked the players what was the most important book in their life. A lot of them said silly things, like Andy Murray, who said he was reading Harry Potter with his kids and really liked it, but others, like Dimitrov, whom I like a lot, mentioned The Point of Vanishing, a book about a man who goes off to live in a cabin for two years and just stays there. It was like saying: why is this young guy, who we know for his parties and plastic-ridden Romanian girlfriends, choosing as the most important book in his life one about a guy who withdraws from civilization? Why can’t we know a bit more? The institutions and tournaments offer very teen content. The same happens with Djokovic. He’s a brilliant person, and I think people don’t know how intelligent he is. He’s emotionally intelligent and also knows a lot about tennis politics, about economics. It’s such a stylistic sport that what they do is move it further away from the people. No matter how many cute videos you make, spread all over TikTok, it’s going to be very difficult to connect. This is also an opportunity for the women.
– What’s happening with the women’s tour that it can’t capture attention?
– I ask myself that too. Dominance is always a double-edged sword. It’s like with Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer, which ended up causing the players who followed them to form the ‘weak era’. I like that Djokovic appeared to unsettle the duopoly and generate more competition. For the men, there were three, but for the women, it was just Serena Williams. It’s not her fault, but that overshadowed the circuit for so many years, and even today it still overshadows it because she’s a tremendous personality, one of the most impactful tennis has ever had. There are people who don’t follow tennis who still think she plays and wins. Her dominance cast a shadow over a tennis that, until then, had many big stars like Gabriela Sabatini, Steffi Graf, and Seles. Then Sharapova appeared, but in reality, she never was a threat to Williams. Rivalries are missing. In the 90s, with Graf, Sabatini, Capriati, all of them had competitive rivalries. I love Iga Świątek, but I want her great rival to emerge.
– Can Aryna Sabalenka help attract more attention to the WTA? Does she have what it takes to be an attractive character beyond the court?
– Aryna has always been a personality, and this year she showed tremendous resilience: her ex-partner passed away and she kept playing, didn’t make a circus out of it. Impeccable. She has an incredible sense of humor, is stunning, and has tremendous tennis. A serve that’s scary. For me, she became a superstar. Another very interesting character is Jasmine Paolini, short, not statuesque. Nobody expected that with her age and physique she’d be fighting for Grand Slam finals. I also like Kasatkina. There’s also Mirra Andreeva, who’s only 17 years old and has immense potential to grow. I don’t feel much connection to Paula Badosa’s personality or tennis, but she’s interesting too.
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– What about Naomi Osaka’s comeback?
– I love Naomi and I hope she can complete her comeback, it would be a great story. She has a very sincere, very disruptive personality, but not in an aggressive way. She’s like Björk. She’s very fresh and has character. She has something super millennial in the best sense, and she’s really achieved an aesthetic change.
– Does Swiatek have that freshness?
– I loved seeing her at Taylor Swift’s concerts, and seeing her go crazy, especially since Taylor sent her a special message. This brings me back to the ATP content topic. The WTA did a questionnaire with her about Taylor Swift and asked such obvious questions that made her say, “this is nonsense.” It was amazing because it happened to me too. How can they ask her who a certain song was written for? It’s obvious she knows if she’s a Swiftie.
– How did you start admiring Djokovic?
– It was when he won his first Australian Open in 2008, because his message was very clear: “I’m no longer afraid of these two.” I also think it had to do with where he comes from. Now it’s different, but back then Serbia was a bombed and demonized country, the country of the genocidaires. So in that place, the tennis clubs weren’t like Swiss or Spanish clubs. It made you want to see this guy win, coming from the bottom with that underdog spirit. That’s why it also surprises me that he’s the hated on the tour, because generally, sympathies tend to go with the weaker one, but he never had that. I didn’t understand why he had the crowd against him, even though he was young and nice. The more they hated him, the more I liked him. In 2008, I said, ‘he’s my player,’ and in 2019 it was the most ecstatic moment, when he beat Federer in the Wimbledon final. That was crazy, especially because of the silence in the stadium afterwards and the mental game, I think that’s when he broke him mentally.
– It’s strange that the best of all generates repulsion among many fans.
– The logic is strange. There are also a lot of people who started disliking him because of the vaccine issue, but then there’s Alexander Zverev, who just settled a lawsuit with money after being accused of hitting his ex-partner, and nothing happened. Sure, he’s not number one or anything, but it’s something much more serious. From a sporting perspective, I think South Americans are more permissive when it comes to using intelligence to win. Djokovic has these habits, like taking long bathroom breaks or pretending to be injured. This bothers others a lot. Argentina is the country of Maradona; Diego scored goals with his hand, and he was clever in deceiving his rivals. All South American footbaall teams are also experts in burning time when there are only two minutes left and they’re winning. That bothers Europeans a lot; they consider it borderline cheating, but it’s part of the game. I don’t think Djokovic abuses this, but I do think for tennis and the very European perspective that tennis has now, it’s seen as bad manners. Cunning is disliked; it’s never been appreciated.
– If you could interview him, what would you ask?
– I would take it in the direction of being disruptive. He doesn’t do it on purpose; it’s just his essence. He comes from a country without a tennis tradition, emerges during an iconic rivalry, and becomes this hated figure. I’d want to know if he understands why. What does it mean to come from a peripheral country? What does it mean to enter a sport like this? How comfortable or uncomfortable is he appearing on the cover of Vogue? I’d like us to think together about what this figure is and what it entails.
– Would you write about him?
– I’d love to understand Serbian to do it, but I’d easily write a biography of Djokovic. The problem is that there’s a language barrier that’s important to overcome because of the sheer amount of material that must exist in Serbian. I’d love to do it. The last biography I wrote was about Silvina Ocampo, and I had a great time. I’d need a Serbian historian and someone knowledgeable about tennis. If it’s Goran Ivanisevic, even better.
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