There was a bad crowd at the badminton match the other night, where powerhouses Malaysia and Indonesia went at it in a cutthroat clash for 'minton immortality.
On the one hand you had your old red, white and . . . well, your old red and white, waved around by dozens of Indonesians who broke spastically now and again into a colonially militant but melodic anthem reminiscent of the music from "Bridge of the River Quai."On the other, you had your old red, white and blue - and yellow. This flag was displayed by a buoyant bunch of Malaysians who drowned out their rivals with rhythmic and repeated bouts of foot-stopping.
All this chest-pounding unfolded inside a cramped 3,706-seat Georgia State University arena, where the previous peak crowd experience to date was probably finals of the intramural P.E. class basketball tournament.
"Would somebody tell me how you can say, `Hey, I'm a badminton player' and have anybody take you seriously?" wondered one shallow fan who was present perhaps only because somebody had given him a $27 general-admission ticket.
Which is just where the standard reply for all Olympics everywhere can be invoked: You know, all that stuff about the modern Games, officially speaking, not being so much about money and marketing, but rather serving to bridge cultural chasms and make us all one people.
Yes, and the International Olympic Committee is composed of chaste holymen.
Whatever.
One thing the Indonesian-Malaysian matchup left many Americans in the stands noting was that you can sure put your eye out with a shuttlecock. Not that anybody did, though the first match of the evening (a women's doubles contest between China and Denmark) demonstrated to the uninitiated that this isn't the kind of backyard badminton you dally around at over the barbecue.
Standard speeds for the shuttlecock - which in professional protocol must never, ever be referred to as a "birdie" - are 150 mph. In men's doubles they routinely reach 200 mph.
Unknowing spectators in Atlanta were prone to "Oooooohs" and "Ahhhhhhs" during extended, high-speed volleys and on occasion turned to one another in befuddlement over the rules.
Two Germans discussed one call in an exchange in which, to the untrained ear, only the words "net" and "verboten" were understandable.
But this much is known: It is the fastest of all net sports, requiring quicker reflexes than tennis, volleyball or even the diminutive but mighty pursuit of table tennis. Smash volleys are the strategy in doubles. Singles is a more subtle game of drops and lobs.
And it has regal roots, too. Founded 1,500 years ago in Asia, picked up by British military officers in Indiana and adopted as a garden game by English sophisticates and other upper-crust Europeans, who still lavish a layer of gentility over things.
Take, for instance, the Dutch umpire who presided over the Malaysian-Indonesian match, sitting like a king all by himself on a tall chair at one end of the net and pronouncing each score in a distinct British clip. He lent the fierce game a veneer of civility, and it wasn't like anybody was going to argue with him, seeing that he had exactly 11 assistants posted around the court.
The crowd, raucous as it was, behaved within the sport's boundaries of etiquette, which were marred only by a few picture-happy fans firing off flashes, an egregious breach of manners in so small a venue. After repeated warnings, one paparazzo was dragged from the upper seats and evicted.
No fewer than six television cameras tracked the action from numerous angles, an indication that somewhere, someone was watching.
It's not track and field. The United States doesn't even begin to have a competitive badminton team, so nobody in the bleachers was chanting "U.S.A." And NBC certainly wasn't broadcasting the event.
Still, this was a moment of national glory for a couple of countries that aren't usually swamped with Olympic attention and like to make the most of things when they get it.
Malaysia won, incidentally, moving onto the finals and a crack at the badminton gold, a coveted honor in some quarters of Asia, as illustrated by the reception Indonesian athletes got during the sport's Olympic debut in 1988, for taking five badminton medals, the first of any kind their country had ever won.
They were national heroes when they got home, and their appreciative government paid them $500,000 apiece.
This of course is about what Dream Teamers spend on lunch. But it's a lot of money in Indonesia.