I tried to resist. I really did. But I’m going to write about Challengers again.

I’ve spent most of the past couple weeks raving to anyone who will listen about this movie, but with a few exceptions, most of my friends who have also seen it had less positive reviews. Nobody hated it, but I have felt on a bit of an island in my zeal. And I think I’ve figured out why—none of these friends are very into sports (at least at the moment, to my knowledge)—and the friends who liked the movie as much as I did are.

I’m going to write about how Challengers is one of very few sports movies to actually capture what makes watching sports compelling, even though it’s actual depiction of tennis gameplay only ranges from passable to wildly unrealistic.

When I first wrote about Challengers, I wasn’t overly focused on the story but I did briefly discuss its focus on competition, and how competition is inherently relational. That’s something that deeply resonates with me.

I have always been a competitive person. Growing up, I would relentlessly badger my opponents in any competitive environment verbally to gain an advantage. I was a terror negotiating in Monopoly. I was a generally happy and pleasant kid, but one of the things that made me lose my temper was feeling cheated or picked on in a competitive game (athletic or otherwise), when I would scream and cry, accuse whoever was playing with me (usually my family) of conspiring against me, and storm away and refuse to keep playing1.

In my adult life, I’ve steadily worked on taming and subduing this aspect of myself. Some of my friends who haven’t known me as long, or haven’t played a lot of board games with me, might even be surprised to hear me describe myself this way. I do think I do a pretty good job of keeping it beneath the surface now, most of the time (although I haven’t always been successful—one of my only true fights with one of my best friends happened when I took the game Splendor way, way, way too seriously).

But there was an in-between time, when my competitiveness was (hopefully) less obnoxious but still obsessive, when I could channel it. I rowed in both high school and college, and rowing is a sport that is fundamentally, at every level, about being competitive. In practice it’s about being faster than your teammates to earn a spot in a boat, and in races you’re lined up next to your competition and can actively see them moving ahead of or behind you. My strength as a rower was never being stronger or faster or better than anyone else—it was about being psychotic, with just enough self-control to get by. And those were the years when I learned the art of competition through relationship.

In high school, my boat (filled with much better rowers than me who were just as psychotic as I was, which made us very good), treated every race like it began the moment we showed up at the venue. We wore matching outfits, matching sunglasses, we never went anywhere alone. We intentionally walked by our opponents to stare at them in unison. Warming up for races, our coxswain (the short guy in the boat who yells at everyone), would tell us when we were approaching an opponent, and we had a specific warm-up we’d do specifically designed to be intimidating. Just before the start, we’d look once, in unison, at our opponents, and then turn back and refuse to look at them again. We were collectively obsessed with the psychological game of competition.

I carried that mindset into college as I faced steeper competition for a spot on our top boats. My second year, I identified a teammate who I knew was just a little bit faster than me. Every day when we warmed up indoors on rowing machines, I’d sit next to him and go just slightly faster than he did. If he sped up, I would too. We exhausted each other in what were supposed to be easy, relaxed exercises—but no matter how beat down I was, I would finish by smiling, standing up like it had been easy, slapping him on the back and saying “great job.” Then I’d walk out of the room and collapse. This teammate—who was stronger and just a better rower than I was—never once beat me in a competitive indoor rowing exercise all year. He fell apart, every time, the moment I pulled ahead, because I convinced him on a daily basis he would lose. (The next two years he was so much better than me I never came close to him again).

I’m telling these stories because they were how I learned competitiveness is fundamentally about connecting to your opponent—establishing a relationship and struggling to define its dynamic in a way that benefits you in that competition. My high school team worked hard to create a relationship with our opponents so they believed they would lose. I did the same thing to my college teammate. In both cases, the lines between the competition and life around the competition blurred or disappeared.

Truly elite competitors aren’t obnoxious—they’re seductive and charismatic. There is a reason Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Tom Brady, Megan Rapinoe, and every other transcendentally dominant athlete feels iconic in a way that goes beyond the field of play. We as an audience were and are immersed culturally in the inevitability of their victory, and so were their opponents—who seemed to, against their will, be in awe of them, to love them, even as they struggled to overcome them. These elite competitors created a relationship with the world that greased the wheels of their athletic dominance.

All sports, especially elite sports, are fundamentally about each side seeking to know the other and in doing so convince them to lose. And everyone I know who truly LOVES watching sports—not as a hobby but as a passion—revels in that antagonistic, intimate relationship between competitors and rivals and how we, as fans, get to be a small part of it.

Most sports movies choose not to focus on this antagonism. They focus on inner growth, on training montages demonstrating commitment and resolve. Opponents are emblematic of inner demons and obstacles, are foils to the heroes, rather than equally dynamic partners in a back-and forth—winning becomes an individual achievement rather than a conversation between competitors. I love these movies anyway—Miracle, The Replacements, Ted Lasso Season 1, even A Knight’s Tale—but they are missing something about sport.

Challengers, more than any sports movie I’ve ever seen, captures that strange blend of intimacy and hatred and respect, and love, that comes from true competition (another movie that does capture the competitive relationship effectively is A League of Their Own). Every moment of the film, especially the parts off of the tennis court, are about competition. It also captures how those same dynamics can be toxic when you allow them to seep into a genuine relationship—romantic or otherwise. (Spoilers follow).

Patrick Zweig’s entire life is competition—right down to his tinder matches. His teenage friendship with Art is genuine, but also how he maintains his mental edge over him—telling Tashi he taught Art to masturbate, his offer to lose purposefully in their final, his encouragement of Art’s parallel pursuit of Tashi (even after she is already his girlfriend) are all ways of demonstrating to Art that he is in control—that he is winning. That he will win. In the flashback to Atlanta, after their estrangement, he casually watches Art practice while wearing Tashi’s old t-shirt to project his confidence. In their thirties, when Art is undeniably the better and more successful tennis player, Patrick still has a clear mental edge, demonstrated in their confrontation in the sauna, where Art is disturbed by Patrick’s seemingly unearned swagger. The fact his competitiveness with Art is obviously so inextricably linked to his deep, genuine desire for Art—his lust for Art—only deepens both feelings. It’s obviously toxic but also sincere—by knowing Art he loves him and seeks to dominate, even consume, him.

His relationship with Tashi becomes competitive the moment he tries to make it about something other than his competition with Art. The only moment in the entire film Patrick tries to let go of competition is when he’s about to sleep with her in her dorm room—and it results in him losing her and Art. He never stops competing again, and it is that competitive ruthlessness that makes Tashi both hate and desire him. Their competition is so intense she is both repulsed by and uncontrollably drawn to him, because his desire to defeat her allows him to see her in ways other people simply can’t.

Tashi’s entire character is based around competition. She’s even more competitive than Patrick. She is unable to process any aspect of her life without tennis framing it—either as a player, a coach, or even as a fan. Her initial flirtation with both Patrick and Art, for her, is entirely about their imminent match and ongoing struggle. She recognizes the connection of competition instinctively—telling Art and Patrick that tennis is a relationship, that she and her opponent (who she obliterated) were briefly in love. She, unlike Patrick, never forgets she is competing, never lets go. Even when she can’t compete on the court she exerts her will over others to win as a coach, as a wife—she uses Art’s love for her (which she never verbally reciprocates once in the film) to get herself as close to elite competition as she can. She forces Art to keep playing when he doesn’t want to, she tries to seduce Patrick into losing to further her goals for Art’s career. She threatens to leave Art if he loses to Patrick because her marriage is fundamentally about winning tennis matches. She can’t process any relationship outside of winning and losing. As sad and pathetic as that is, it’s also obviously true and meaningful to her.

Art’s journey in the film, meanwhile, is about embracing competition. He never once wins a singles tennis match on screen in the entire movie, even though his career is by far the most successful of the three characters. The one match he does win, his doubles final where he and Patrick were teammates, we never even see his racket connect with the ball. He spends his life figuratively (and briefly, but memorably, literally) running away from Patrick, even during their friendship, because he is so unwilling to engage meaningfully in competition with him. He grows distant from Tashi because he loves her so much he can’t fight her for what he wants, and as a result can’t fully connect with her. His desire for both of them, as a result, is far less intense and carnal than Patrick’s desire for him or than Patrick and Tashi’s chemistry—but not because that desire isn’t there, but because he isn’t willing to access it on their terms. He spends most of the film willfully blind to the hollow reality of his life and marriage.

In the climax of the film—when he sees everything, when he truly knows his wife and Patrick, when he can’t escape his intimate knowledge of both—is the first time he truly competes. The final sequence, when he leaps over the net, angrily, viciously, in what feels like a moment of domination (even though he would technically lose the point), is the first time he truly meets Patrick and Tashi’s level of competitive fire. And the result is his first mutually immersive embrace with Patrick, and the first time Tashi shows true, positive passion for both of them. Competition, knowing the flaws of the people he loves and seeking to dominate them—finally gives him what he wants.

Obviously none of this three-way relationship is healthy—domination is not the foundation of positive connection—but the film ends the moment their relationships becomes honest and transparent. Competition reveals Art and Patrick and Tashi to each other, and there is hope and possibility in that—that they can find a push-and-pull that fires them up without destroying each other.

And the truth of that—of the intimacy of competition—is what sports fans who obsessively follow sports are actually into. It’s not making a a basket or scoring a goal—it’s the psychological give and take, the showmanship of athletes seeking to convince the other to lose, the fact that in most sports competitors are physically pressing and forcing themselves onto one another and how that brings out both hatred and deep respect. Challengers has that.

And it’s why I loved the movie.

Share

I Hosted a Party

This past weekend I got to do my favorite thing, which is invite a bunch of great people to my place and get them all to hang out together. I love watching new friendships form and bragging about my friends to my other friends, and I got to meet a few wonderful new friends, too. The theme of the party was a cocktail potluck—everyone brought their own summer cocktail, ranging from spicy margaritas to Aperol spritz’s to homemade sangria to mimosas to a Miller high life mixed with Aperol. Everything was delicious. I made Rose Porto Tonicos, a cocktail I learned about on a trip to Portugal a few years ago—a mix of (rose) port, tonic water, bruised ginger, rosemary, and citrus that essentially tastes like hard ginger ale (and is therefore very dangerous).

My favorite part of hosting, though, is cooking for my guests. This time I fired up the grill for marinated veggie skewers, homemade burgers (a recipe I think I have finally perfected), and some brats.

Because I insisted on sampling a little of everyone’s cocktails, I was feeling very…at ease, let’s say, as the party progressed and the grill got busy.

Thankfully people were there to monitor me for safety. If you’re in Brooklyn anytime soon, I’d love to fire up the grill for you, too :)