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Sporting Life
Retired athletes often leave a void – some never get filled
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No one in golf has been able to fill the void left behind by Tiger Woods' departure from the leaderboard.
PHOTO: AFP
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On the ASAP Sports website there are roughly 900 transcripts of Rafael Nadal interviews dating back to April 2003. And yet an Andy Roddick interview with the Spaniard has drawn over 350,000 views on YouTube since it was posted on March 11. It lasted an entire hour but people listened. Because this is all that’s left of Nadal. Words. The shots are over.
People watch out of curiosity but also to fill something everyone in sport feels. This awkward void when a beloved athlete leaves the stage. Fans feel stranded, even abandoned, and will clutch onto anything. It happens frequently in a lifetime – Michael Schumacher, Monica Seles, Sugar Ray Leonard, Sachin Tendulkar – and every retirement is like the closure of some profound, one-sided friendship.
