1. This video of a young Goran Ivanisevic confronting a chair umpire about how to correctly pronounce his name. And my tenderness for it. For the shifts in his face, between weary, wry bemusement and offended pride. For his distinctive left lateral incisor—which, from the latest images I’ve seen of him, he still has. He hasn’t had it fixed.

2. My partner, telling me why he liked Ivanisevic so much as a kid. Because he was passionate, charismatic, volatile, easily frustrated, always compelling to watch. “Because he was known for aces in the second serve.” And why is that special, I said; already knowing the answer, wanting to hear it out loud. “Well, obviously most players will do something safe for their second serve. He usually didn’t. Of course, that’s why he would also often double fault.”

3. Ivanisevic who in 2001 became the only wild card entry who ever won the Wimbledon men’s singles title.

4. Coincidentally, he won against Patrick Rafter, the same player against whom Ivanisevic is playing in the video above.

5. I talked about years that have vibrations around them for me. 2001 has a vibration around it. This vibration having to do with something like: innocence, or the longing for spontaneity. I was sitting in a classroom, moving too slowly through teenagedom. The world was going to end, and then it didn’t, and then.

6. Ivanisevic, upon whose Wimbledon win that romantic comedy with Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst, Wimbledon, was based.

7. Of course, the movie transforms the Croatian player into an English one, gives him a sassy golden American love interest.

8. To have a British player finally win Wimbledon; well, that’s one use for movies.

9. Dreaming.

10. I loved Paul Bettany as Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale. His funny-sad liquid sexuality. The way he enters the film stark naked. His charm, which was entirely in his talking, which extended to his every gesture: how even his body seemed to be talking, all the time.

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