^ Yup, Mustard's always been reasonable despite all the insults flying around. kragster is another great Nadal fan. TheLoneWolf is/was like real mustard, zesty and sharp
Clarky's been a riot (and I mean that positively) ... mostly. I am cool with namelessone and a bunch of others too. On the whole, each camp has its good bad and ****y posters.
Some pretty funny posts in this thread, btw.
I stand by Senti. He proves that you can have a lot of posts without being a deluded ****.
It's funny how people are ascribing such specific character traits to such broad swaths of fans, the vast majority of which have real lives and real jobs, neither of which can be replaced by tennis or tennis forums.
But that speaks to the 1-percenter effect. Like those who control the wealth (Fed and Nad, for example), these extremist online fans exude an outsize amount of sway relative to their miniscule representation in the overall population. They're part of a cult of personality, and not people who enjoy the sport.
The average Fed fan (myself included) admires that on the whole he plays the most beautiful tennis one can imagine. It's as simple as that. I'm not looking for wish fulfillment, as some suggest, because I live in a basement making collages from magazine features on "Lord of the Rings" movies, dreaming of making Mirka my elvin queen and using Fed's untold millions to create a replica spacecraft from "Star Wars" to fly her and my Dungeons & Dragons role-playing group to a distant planet (but, hey, it's cool if that's your thing).
To me, that breathtaking tennis marks the subjective idea of "the best ever" and no results can change that, but it's a bonus that he's objectively the most successful player, as well. But to an extremist few, it's a religion that must be defended, and those who doubt are infidels who must be issued fatwas (pity those who can't see the difference between a fun/absurdist thread like the Golden Eagle club and real **** exercises like digging up super-obscure facts and unremarkable YouTube clips as evidence of his GOAThood, or reanalyzing the Fedal rivalry ad nauseum as if they'll convert someone).
In the same way, most Nadal fans would probably say they love his fighting spirit. There may be a smaller number who just want to cast him in their own romance novels, his fist-pumping muscled arm raised on the cover, his shirt conspicuously absent, the presence of underwear a mystery beneath the silk sheets. Then there are extremists, people who will bombard the Internet in blind defense of their savior, which means waging war on his foes. They defy bans with new identities to obsess another day. Even when their hero is injured, they can't accept the news, like a distraught individual who can't bear the thought a loved one has passed, so they create fantasy what-ifs, his void haunting draws he would have dominated, titles he would have won 20 times in a row if only he was not ailing. It's a sort of rare disease among a select few (or perhaps just one person with dozens of accounts): Not only can't they fathom a tennis world without Rafa, they can't fathom a post without Rafa.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Nole fans. He's kind of a cross between Roger and Rafa, so maybe they love his winning blend of mentality and shotmaking. Maybe they love he was the third wheel who broke up a two-man party. Reasonable reasons to enjoy his game. But to the extremist, his hot 2011 is proof that he'll never lose again, a sign of dominance of years to come, his place already secured at the top of the all-time player list. And not only will he beat Fed, Rafa and Murray now, but he'd beat them at their all-time peaks everytime because he's a model of tennis perfection. Isn't this starting to feel like a battle between the world's major religions? In a similar fashion, logic never enters into these discussions.
Murray fans live to be disappointed. Or they share kinship over flawed dentistry and hairstyling. Or they're desperately British. Or, hey, maybe they just like an underdog. Or defensive-minded tennis. Or find men who cry sexy. Or they hate Fed, Nadal and Nole and want someone else to dominate.
As you can see, there are a lot of reasons to be a fan of a tennis player. But the right reason is because you're a fan of tennis.
