'Is there any expectation?' responded Raducanu after her semi-final victory.
This is a key remark, since the Raducanu's seem to 'raducalise', as a family unit, a paradigm-shift from the head - sports psychologists and motivation - to the body - flow-of-action.
Yes, with the extensive coverage I've been reading about the family unit. Chinese inner strength was already mentioned; her Romanian father is raducal in another way, apparently taking the attitude that each shot deserves a separate trainer!
This is probably apocryphal,but is still a trail-bossism that says the person doing the action tells the coach what they want and not the other way round.
This brings-up the second difference, that the specialised heavy-hitters are now facing the return of real tennis in the form of shot-making.
A specialist is trained, is told what to do, and when two specialists meet it's fairly routine. By instead saying routines are what you do off the court, Raducanu (as well as her opponent Fernandez) changes the game back to speedy, flexible shot-making.
This probably explains why the old-timers (the unspoilt old) are really digging the young blood (the unspoilt young).
Raducanu hits the ball low and early, which is more a directional than a power-shot. The Telegraph also had an analysis of her return, which goes at the feet of the server.
I suppose that latter might've true, but even more so for more ponderous, robotic heavy-servers. Someone like Fernandez should be able to adjust and step sideways or back-off.
The general drift is the robotic, specialised game of routine power is now under attack from shot-makers who are above all flexible and don't rely on rote.
At this point, you may ask why all this discussion of a mere game? The answer is that a physical game gives clear indications to the false reality of specialist routine that we unfortunate moderns appear to inhabit. Sakkari, for example, seemed like she was totally bemused by the sudden rise of realism, and thought she and the others 'hadn't been at their best.'
Seemingly implying a mental rather than physical lack, or that physical shortcomings are somehow psychological! The same applies to the entire Western paradigm; a weak, destabilised system can only recover through physical strength and resilience.
The physical and the psyche are related, and one could almost say Raducanu has an Oriental insouciance that is the mark of the Mongolian warrior. The Eastern warrior-in-action is not thinking, they are moving and acting.
They are not team-players (somewhat like Illyana Rasputin, prev) and can be harsh,but the physical is constantly related to psychic insouciance.
Of course, this is the total opposite of a Western-style democracy where psychological motivation is the only game in town. Politicians become the same logical egotists of the false $ (Apollo).
All this is really the confusion of specialised routine with playing the game of life.
In Rome, Pliny the Younger had his gardener trim his own name out of topiary right next to that of the master. Pliny himself was held in high esteem as both a lawyer and a Curator of the Bed and Banks of the Tiber and the City's Sewers.. Politicians doubled as priests. Mathematicians were engineers and philosophers.. In our obsession with specialising.. we've lost all sense of the joy that can be found in combining different types of knowledge.
We should stop worrying about how pursuing any particular branch of knowledge makes us look, and follow the Romans - learning this, learning that, doing what satisfies us most. Not everything has to be useful, not everything has to be goal-oriented. As any ancient builder could have told you, learning always has been more than just another brick in the wall. (Daisy Dunn (classicist), DT)
Or the illusory brick of DNA, which is the biggest routine of all and attracts the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions.
Instead of a logically 'getable' routine, life is a physical game of antagonistic parts, where balance and coordination are the winners.
Forgetting this fact opens the door to weakness and illusion (the egotistical head) and closes the physical reality that is related to psychic calm.
The planets spin; the psyche emanates in Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy; physical attributes are real and imbue us with mental fortitude.
Anything else is not reality; it is a specialisation that sooner-or-later comes up against reality- and is stymied.
