Belgrade belle
Taki
Inever thought I’d see it, a beauty winning a major title, at least not since the Williams sisters and the ghastly Maria Sharapova came on the scene. But there she was last weekend, an olive-skinned enchantress winning the French Open and charming everyone with her femininity and grace. If only Ana Ivanovic did not use the word ‘guys’ so much, she’d be perfect. But, what the heck, that’s the price you pay for mixing with Americans on the circuit.
Will her looks last? Not if she keeps playing they won’t, so let’s enjoy her while she still has them aged 21. Nothing kills beauty quicker than sweating and battling under the harsh sun. Mind you, most women athletes are dogs to begin with, and that definitely includes tennis players, but there have been a few exceptions. Annabel Croft for one, but she quit early on and just in time. Gabriella Sabatini was another beauty who quit on time, as did Anna Kournikova, Gussie Moran and one Carol Fageros, ranked in the top ten during the Fifties in the States. But they were the exceptions. Most champions are not blessed with looks, which I suppose is fair enough. How would you like to face a Keira Knightley across the net when you look like Martina Navratilova? The Almighty knows what he’s doing.
My pet hate is that Sharapova woman. She does not grunt, she screams, and she does it in order to put off her opponents. But such is the Gadarene greed of professional sport that no one dares raise the issue. Her sponsors should replace Miss Bovine, all six foot three of her, with Ana Ivanovic, the Belgrade belle who has bewitched me to the extent that I have not thought of The Spectator’s deputy editor since last Saturday.
But on to less serious matters, like this Murray chap. He has a book out about his life, all 21 years of it, which is a pretty hard thing to do as he’s an illiterate. Andy Murray thinks the English are bad at tennis because they’re lazy. In view of the fact that he’s never won a grand slam, perhaps he should let others make this point, but, in this world of mammon, one has to be blatant, noisy and controversial, hence the opus.
In my not so humble opinion, the reason English players bring up the rear is an obvious one. They’ve been sitting on their arses since the second world war and know how to whinge, not how to win. Just look at those Russian women who are dominating the rankings. Most of them look like Soviet era factory workers, the same workers who stayed on the job and churned out the goods while under German bombardment. In other words, Russians know how to suffer, and modern-day tennis means suffering for close to three hours per day. Gone, alas, are the days when a Belgian gentleman like Philippe Washer could reach the quarters at Wimbledon three times, and the semis in Paris, while staying out late every night with yours truly chasing you know what. (And, as everyone knows, it’s not the sex that wears one out, it’s chasing after it.) And just look at the Serbs. While the draft-dodging Clinton was busy bombing a Christian Orthodox country in order to make Kosovo safe for radical Muslims, Ana Ivanovic was reduced to training on a makeshift court that was at the bottom of an empty swimming-pool. I don’t think many English tennis players would contemplate going out to hit balls while bombs were raining down, which is the difference between the Serbs and the Anglos.
Murray is wrong. The English players do train hard, but refuse to suffer once the match commences. I know how they feel because although I trained very hard I always thought there was more to life than hitting one more ball across the net than my opponent. In fact, that’s why I love judo and karate. Five minutes at most and it’s all over. One has to be Sisyphus to win today, which is why even the arguably greatest of them all, Roger Federer, is having a hard time. The old fire is no longer there. It cannot be after a certain amount of time.
Enough said about a silly game which was invented by French courtiers hitting potatoes at each other. It’s also football time, and Greece, a tiny nation of ten million schmucks, is defending her European Cup victory of four years ago. You wouldn’t know it by reading the British press, of course. Back then it was called a fluke, and perhaps it was, but when was the last time England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland won anything? (I’m being unfair. England did beat San Marino three or four years ago in a famous victory.) If tiny Greece and tinier Portugal — the latter plays the best football in the world, better than Brazil — can win, why can’t big old England? I’ll tell you why. British footballers are taught to play like thugs, not artists, and their lack of education doesn’t help either. One has to develop skills, like controlling the ball and passing it, but the Brits only know how to run like crazy up and down the pitch, tackle very hard, spit a lot, use the F-word and get sent off. Not the same thing as playing smart football. Just as well no British team made it this time. I’d hate to see beautiful Austria and Switzerland invaded by potbellied, tattooed yobs, although both the Swiss and the Austrian fuzz know how to handle them. I didn’t see any of these lagerswilling swine do their stuff in Moscow because they knew what the Russkies would do to them. Go, Greece, Portugal and Germany.
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