untung clay season dekat dengan UAS semester 8. Love that Looking for the Big Clayback | 04/26/2010 - 2:04 PM |
New arenas mess me up. They throw my viewing game off. Two weeks ago I waxed on about how reassuring it is to return to the old European clay of Monte Carlo every spring, to see its center court in the same spot where we left it, still suspended between sky and sea, the bleachers as small and low-slung as they’ve always been, the light blanketing everything the same way it always has. Coming to Rome, I’d heard that a brand-new stadium awaited us, but, this being the Eternal City and all, I pictured a new venue that would look pretty much exactly the same as the old. The Foro Italico means fascist-kitsch statues, a marble amphitheater, and lots of low, golden, late-afternoon light, right?
It turns out that time doesn’t stand still in Rome, either. The new center court has retained the amphitheatre concept, but that low sunlight has been blocked by an upper section of bleachers, and the whole place has been filled with implacable steel-gray seats that have a way of looking conspicuously empty. The stadium might be spectacular in person, and I’ll get used to it eventually on TV. Somehow, though, empty seats look better when they’ve been around for a while. You know, at least, that they’ve been filled many times before.
And they will be again, once the top guys begin to christen the new court over the next couple of days. Let’s take a look at what might happen when they get there.