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September 30, 2005
Illusionists who shade the rest with nothing to declare except their genius
By Simon Barnes, The Times
IT
HAS been a week for contemplating the nature of genius. Like all
others, I suppose, but Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home,
broadcast on Monday and Tuesday, certainly brought the matter to mind.
Dylan is the only genius that pop music has produced. He stands as far
above the rest as Shakespeare towers above everyone else that wrote a
play. It is not necessary to like Dylan, or for that matter,
Shakespeare, to come to such a conclusion. You can, more or less
objectively, state that these two created one masterpiece after
another, in an immense variety of forms and moods, on a scale that no
one else has even thought of challenging. And
so, naturally enough, the mind strays from the love who speaks like
silence and William Zanzinger and the night that plays tricks when
you’re trying to be so quiet, and turns to genius in other walks of
life. Like sport. Most people would agree that genius of a kind exists
in sport — and most of us would be careful about the way we use the
term. After England had been scattered by Glenn McGrath in the
Lord’s Test, I referred to him as “a genius”. My friend and colleague
Michael Henderson disagreed with the term, which got me thinking. I had
used it deliberately, and a touch perversely, to make it quite clear
that the collapse was as much a matter of McGrath’s brilliance as
England’s errors. But Hendo disallowed genius for McGrath: but I don’t think he
— or anyone — would disallow the term for Shane Warne. If you accept
the concept of sporting genius at all, Warne is self-evidently a
genius. But why, then, is McGrath, a man who has taken 500 Test
wickets, not a genius? All at once, there is a hint that sporting
genius is not quite the same thing as sporting excellence. When Wisden carried out its search for the five
cricketers of the 20th century, not a single fast bowler made the list:
the best was Dennis Lillee in sixth place. True, Wisden was not
explicitly looking for genius, but the reluctance to give the supreme
accolade to a fast bowler — and fast bowlers win more Test matches than
any other kind of cricketer — is significant. Let us turn to football. Genius: well, we have to start with
Pelé and Diego Maradona, and then get into beery arguments about
Zinedine Zidane and Johan Cruyff and George Best. What we won’t do is
talk about centre halves. John Terry, Terry Butcher, Tony Adams, forget
it. A centre half is indispensable: a great centre half is the team’s
rallying point of sanity and safety and security. A team without a
centre half is not a team. But no one looks at Sol Campbell and says:
“The man’s a genius.” In England’s World Cup- winning rugby union side, you might
call Jason Robinson a genius, for his thrilling, defence-scattering
running. You might even use the term for Jonny Wilkinson. But England
won the World Cup because of the driving force of Martin Johnson, and
no one has suggested that Jonno is a genius. You can complete the
ultimate achievement in your sport and still be free of genius. Everyone uses the term genius for Roger Federer. As with
Warne, the term is self-evident, not a hint of controversy. The
greatest tennis player that lived, in terms of grand-slam victories, is
Pete Sampras, with 14, as compared with Federer’s six and counting. No
one considered Sampras a genius. For that matter, the greatest achiever in the history of sport
has never been called a genius. Sir Steve Redgrave is everybody’s idea
of sporting greatness and if five Olympic gold medals do not make you a
genius, it is crystal clear that genius is not the same thing as
sporting excellence. Let us go back to tennis. Sampras’s game was based on naked
force of will. His chief weapon was usually considered to be his serve.
In fact, it was his second serve: not only accurate and safe, but also
brutally competitive. That reflected not his skill but his nerve. This
is not a prosaic quality. Sampras, like Redgrave, has the world’s
respect but from both, the word genius is withheld. Federer’s game is different. It is shockingly various. He is
as myriad-minded as ever Shakespeare was. He can play shots that no one
else can, he can make the ball do things that you would think
impossible. There is an aesthetic beauty to his game, as well as a
sense of purpose. There is a kind of magic about it that we find deeply
pleasing to watch. In art, we use the term genius for the highest achievers:
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Joyce. In sport we frequently use the term
for lesser achievers whose skills, for some reason, please us. In
snooker, the serial winners Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry were admired
all right but only Alex Higgins, Jimmy White and Ronnie O’Sullivan are
called genius. Sporting genius involves something of an illusion. Warne,
Federer and Zidane offer the illusion of complicity, the stunning
impression that the person who is doing everything possible to stop the
genius is in fact co-operating with him. Thus competition assumes the
air of a dance, a ritual, something that is both spontaneous and
immemorial. There is a real beauty in this, for all that beauty is not
the aim of the exercise. The beauty is incidental, and perhaps the more
pleasing for that. And all those who acquire the name of genius are able to
supply another illusion, that they have some kind of immunity from the
laws that govern the rest of us. We think of a genius as a man apart, a
man for whom the normal rules do not apply, Vincent van Gogh being, if
you like, the type specimen. A sporting genius seems to have been let off the laws of
physics. Gravity does not pull him down. A ball will behave not as
Newton said, but according to some grander and more idiosyncratic world
view. Warne makes a cricket ball behave with a new and elusive logic;
Federer puts tennis ball and opponent on contrary strings; Zidane
leaves defenders and goalkeepers lunging at air. Those who possess these talents often fall in love with them.
All athletes go out to win. Sampras set out to win by means of will,
Federer by means of genius. All methods of winning have their drawbacks
and a sporting genius can fall in love with his own gifts, and find
himself seeking to create art and beauty above mere victory. But to do so, even in the debased sporting use of the term, is
to betray both sport and genius. If genius in sport is not used
entirely for the purpose of seeking victory, it is an empty thing, a
mere decoration: to be a Henri Leconte or a Rodney Marsh. If we accept
that sport can bring out a kind of genius, we must also accept that in
sport — even though on occasions they coincide gloriously — genius and
greatness are not the same thing.
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