NEW YORK—Over the years, tennis has become the domain of sporting gladiators trained almost from the cradle to pursue perfect technique, impeccable form, and elegant strokes that leaves no stylistic or physical weaknesses for an opponent to exploit.
Once the tour had a healthy helping of unorthodox players, but outliers, iconoclasts, merchants of quirk—even flakes—are in even shorter supply than one-handed backhands. A few still survive, though, most notably Jenson Brooksby. He is a 24-year old, broad-shouldered, Californian who stands 6-foot-4, but often hits first serves with less pace than seconds. Many of either variety clock in under 100 mph, in an era when 135-mph deliveries barely warrant a raised eyebrow.
“I guess you could use that word ‘quirky,’” Brooksby said when I broached the subject in an interview at the US Open, shortly after Brooksby was beaten by Flavio Cobolli in a wildly-entertaining second-round rumble on Stadium Court 17. The match lasted just over four-and-a-half hours, and ended with Cobolli, the No. 24 seed, claiming the match tiebreaker, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(3).
