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The seasons in Rome sometimes advance so slowly, so subtly, that their changes can’t be felt any more than can the rotation of the earth. Only the effect, not the process, is perceptible. On a morning in late May one is apt to wake and abruptly realize that another spring is about to pass into summer, and one gets an overwhelming urge to hurry outdoors and seize the day.

Some head for the beaches at Ostia, others settle for a stroll in the Borghese Gardens. Setting out on my own annual rite of spring, I snake my way up the Tiber, swept along by a tidal wave of traffic that thunders beneath a colonnade of plane trees. Leaving the historical center of the city, I cross the river and arrive at the Foro Italico, site of the Italian Open tennis tournament.

A fair club player myself and a frequent commentator on the foibles of that curious subculture, the international tennis circuit, I attend the Italian Open every year, partly to watch the matches, primarily to witness—and participate in—the far more fascinating spectacle that swirls around the periphery of the courts. If a city as multilayered and complex as Rome can be said to have a microcosm, then the Italian Open is it, for the tournament compresses into a single week the essential elements of a 2,700-year-old metropolis that calls itself eternal, yet displays the frenetic energy of a fruit fly living only for a moment. All the Roman hallmarks are here—dazzling color and motion, dense golden light, copious food and wine, high fashion and low comedy, spontaneous friendship and rabid nationalism, grace under fire and ham-handed evocations of a real and imagined past.

Approaching the Foro Italico, one receives conflicting impressions of order and anarchy. The order is entirely architectural and not very interesting except as an example of high Fascist style. Constructed in 1935 during Benito Mussolini’s regime, the buildings and statues and a tall obelisk, which still bears Il Duce’s name, were intended to remind the public of the grandeur of ancient Rome, which the dictator hoped to re-create. Now the broad slabs of marble serve as cool benches or as billboards for graffiti.

The anarchy is infantile and unconscious, and while it doesn’t appear to perturb Italians, it can be daunting to anybody who sets a high premium on linear reasoning. In the parking lot drivers follow patterns and jockey for places in a manner few Americans can imagine. At ticket booths and entry gates, where members of other nationalities naturally start a queue, Italians stand in a jostling, amorphous cluster.

Once past the gates, the crowd spreads out and there’s ample room to observe the sport and the fashion show. It would be difficult to say who is more elegantly dressed, the players or the spectators—many of them wear the same outfits. Designer tennis clothes, in bold stripes of clinging pastels, are synonymous with Italy, and no place are Fila, Ellesse, Tacchini, and Cerruti products better displayed than at the Foro Italico, where style, the creation of a bella figura, seems as important to fans as winning is to the players.

Bordered by Viale delle Olimpiadi and Viale dei Gladiatori, the red clay courts are set in amphitheaters sunk below street level, and the torrid air that fills these hollows is thick with pollen, perfume, and the aroma of garlic and oregano from a nearby restaurant. Above the Campo Centrale, the main show court, loom massive white marble statues of athletes. Interestingly, they are all—even the skier and the ice skater—naked. With the construction of temporary stands at the top of the stadium, these statues give the appearance of comically inverted Peeping Toms who, while nude themselves, gaze through the steel underpinnings of the bleachers into an area of completely clothed people.

On my first trip to this court, an immense man with an even more immense voice stood up between games and sang parts of arias. Friends swore to me it was Pavarotti urging on Adriano Panatta, who was then the national champion.

Not all of Pavarotti’s countrymen are as artistic in encouraging their local heroes, and the history of the Italian Open has been pockmarked with bizarre incidents.

On a number of occasions, players have retreated from the Campo Centrale rather than suffer the outrages that the crowd and the Italian officials sometimes feel compelled to commit in support of their idols. In 1976, Harold Solomon defaulted in the semifinals after getting a string of flagrantly unfair calls. Two years later, José Higueras, a Spaniard with a reputation for impeccable manners, walked off when spectators began hurling insults and coins. A day later, when Adriano Panatta played Bjorn Borg, the Swede held an unassailable advantage. He was used to having people throw money at him. Promoters and advertisers had been doing it for years. When Italian fans slung coins at Borg, he coolly pocketed the cash and beat Panatta.

The field courts lie at the bottom of an enormous oblong cavity styled on the lines of the Circo Massimo, Rome’s ancient chariot racecourse. Screened off from each other by cypress hedges, these courts are lined by tiers of gently terraced bleachers surfaced with marble that has sprouted wildflowers and tufts of moss. Serious sunbathers stretch out here for hours, keeping one eye on the tennis and the other eye out for strolling vendors who sell mineral water and ice cream cones.

True aficionados tend to remain standing on the walkway that circles the courts. This way they can move from match to match, catching a crucial point here, a sensational shot there. This also allows them to stay under the Umbrian pines that canopy the footpath. Up there in the shade the air is mild and fragrant, the essence of spring. But down on the courts, summer arrives early, and during long, hard-fought rallies players shed rivulets of perspiration that speckle the red clay with what looks like blood. One can’t help being reminded of bullfights. Guillermo Villas, the Argentinian ace, has described the Italian Open in terms worthy of any matador facing death in the afternoon: “The sun is hot. The court is slow. The balls are heavy. It is not easy.”

Fortunately for fans, they are free to retreat from the competition, sit under a striped umbrella, and sip Campari. Or else duck into one of several restaurants and watch a different act of commedia dell’arte. Say what you will about Romans and their indifference to northern notions of efficiency—they certainly can choreograph a meal. If the food sometimes falls short of excellence, the show is never less than world class. As in France, eating here is a kind of religious ritual, but it’s low church rather than high, closer to a fundamentalist revival than to a solemn benediction. Each course is heralded by loud hymns of praise or blame, the clatter of dropped cutlery and plates, the fast-forward ballet of white-jacketed waiters shouting “Momento!” or “Subito!” while they hurry off, never to be seen again.

With the arrival of coffee and cognac, the restaurant grows relatively quiet. There’s just the background murmur of agents and tournament officials talking deals, the muted sound in the distance of tennis balls thwocking against tight gut, and the clopping of hooves as mounted police patrol the parking lot.

Somnolent and soothing though it is, this clip-clopping of horses alerts anyone who is of a mind to notice such things that the area is aswarm with carabinieri and armed troops in flak jackets. By one of those screwy coincidences that abound in Rome, tennis at the Foro Italico can claim no better than second billing. Nearby, on Viale delle Olimpiadi, in a gymnasium barricaded by sandbags and armored personnel carriers, the Italian murder trial of the century has been taking place for the last three years. Dozens of Red Brigades terrorists are testifying about the kidnapping and assassination in 1978 of Aldo Moro, the former prime minister. It’s as though John Hinckley, President Reagan’s would-be assassin, were arraigned in a locker room at Flushing Meadow during the U.S. Open.

At the Italian Open nobody appears to find this upsetting. Rome, after all, touches the Janiculum, the hill named for Janus, the two-faced god whose gaze falls in opposite directions.

Anyone who lives here must learn to look both ways, treating comedy and tragedy as inseparable aspects of every experience.