Winners get what they deserve. But losers are wonderfully human. (Published 2023)

She couldn’t win a single match.

In the third round of the French Open on Saturday, China’s Wang Xinyu had to believe that there was at least a chance she could beat Iga Swiatek, the reigning women’s singles champion and the event’s top seed. After all, Wang is no pushover. She’s a hard-hitting 21-year-old who reached a career-high ranking of 59th in the world in April, and she can put up a viable fight against the very best.

But she lost, and it was as ugly as can be: 6-0, 6-0 — in tennis terms, a dreaded double bagel. The match didn’t last much longer than the warm-up.

I’m saying there’s glory in that kind of imperfection.

Long live the weak. The tired and worn out, the wrestlers and the laggards. The athletes who lose miserably in public.

Long live the losers in sports.

We’ve seen a lot of them this past week and we’ll see even more soon.

Of course, this doesn’t only happen on the smooth clay of Roland Garros.

The NBA and NHL playoffs have finally reached their finals. College softball, the rapidly growing popularity of which is in the mix, is the NCAA Division I championship. The Oklahoma Sooners are gunning for a third straight title — and to add to their Division I record of 51 straight victories — after beating Stanford in extra innings in the semifinals on Monday. Let’s have a little sympathy for the Sooners’ parade of victims.

The bulk of the story will focus on the winners of these championships. That’s only natural. The world’s best athletes stretch and bend the boundaries of human potential. The best of the best even seem able to control time. No wonder we watch them perform with awe that feels existential. They have become godlike in our world.

That’s fine and understandable, but give me the tennis player who struggles with all his might to win one match in a Grand Slam match. Give me the basketball star who blows crucial free throws and the hockey goalie who slips and lets the winning slap shot whiz by.

Give me nerves that wither when the pressure comes. I’m here for reflexes that aren’t what they used to be.

Why? Well, the winners always get what they deserve. But to err, as we all know, is human — perfectly and beautifully. And those who lose in so many different ways occupy the more recognizable corner of major sports.

There is comfort in knowing that highly conditioned, super-coordinated, battle-tested athletes can get tired, cramp up, buckle under pressure, struggle to get enough air, and suffer a painful defeat. In the act of failing, they become, if only briefly, more like the rest of us schmoes.

So we can take solace in the Boston Bruins, who posted a regular-season record of 65 wins and promptly lost in the first round of the NHL playoffs to the Florida Panthers. High expectations for the Stanley Cup were a dead end. Who can agree with that? I certainly can.

Speaking of Boston, in the NBA playoffs, the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum battled back from a 3-0 deficit to tie the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals. Then, in Game 7, in a historic comeback of the game, they collectively dropped a stink bomb with performances that rank among the worst and weakest of their careers.

Ever stood on the brink of something great, only to fail—and fail hard, in public? Yeah, me too, going back to the fifth-grade play where I forgot my lines, tripped on stage, and nearly broke my nose. It wasn’t hard to sympathize with Brown and Tatum as they hit shot after shot, and Miami won by 19 points, with all those millions tuning in.

The red clay court of Roland Garros, where no step is certain, no bounce is expected and every match can turn into a gruelling marathon, offers a crystal-clear insight into the crushing truth of the sport.

Players walk onto the courts looking like Parisian catwalk models, their skin tanned, their tight outfits pressed. And then, once the games get underway, reality sets in.

In other Grand Slam tennis tournaments, points are often won very quickly. On Roland Garros clay, points can stretch out like a John Coltrane solo. They can go on forever, the pressure increases, the tempo builds in a crescendo.

In the most prolonged and competitive matches, you often see the agony — both mental and physical — descend upon the players. Insecurity creeps in, and with it, thinness. Muscles weaken and tremble. The tight outfits — shoes, socks, shirts, wristbands, headbands, hats — cake with sweat and lumps of clay.

Wang wasn’t on court long enough to suffer like that against Swiatek. But Gaël Monfils of France was. Monfils, a seasoned 36-year-old veteran playing perhaps his last Grand Slam in front of his home crowd, won his first-round match despite trailing 4-0 in the fifth set. Along the way, he struggled with sore lungs and a bout of leg cramps. He played out the match, but was so tired and stiff that he didn’t make it back to court for his second-round match two days later.

Time waits for no one.

A few days later, a much younger player, Jannik Sinner of Italy — 21, seeded No. 8 and rapidly rising — took on Daniel Altmaier, a seasoned player ranked No. 79, at Suzanne Lenglen Court.

Sinner should have won without too many problems.

He took an early lead, but struggled. An hour passed. Altmaier caught up. Another hour passed. The match became a stalemate. Three hours became four. Sinner had two match points — and gave them both away. They went to a fifth set. Sinner fell behind and came back: he had four match points, but won them all.

And then … and then, after 5 hours and 26 minutes, Sinner saw a screaming serve fly past his outstretched racket for an ace. Game. Set. Match. Final score: 6-7 (0), 7-6 (7), 1-6, 7-6 (4), 7-5. The upset was the fifth-longest match in French Open history.

Sinner walked off the field disheveled and confused, his face betraying the self-doubt common to losers. In other words, he was beautifully human.