SPECTATOR SPORT
Seriously good
Simon Barnes
WHEN the great public has a close encounter with true excellence, it tends to purse its lips in a non-committal fashion and say, 'God, how frightfully boring.' That, certainly, is the general response to the vic- tory of Pete Sampras at Wimbledon.
Well, this is only one of the greatest, per- haps the greatest, tennis player ever to swish a racket. I can quite easily work up a rage on the subject. If you find Sampras boring, if you find sporting excellence bor- ing, then you have no right to be watching sport.
Sampras has now won Wimbledon five times, equalling the record of Bjorn Borg. And did anybody ever call Borg boring? They didn't, though you could certainly have made a case for it. Borg was relentless rather than brilliant, but no one noticed because he had extremely long hair. He was a Roundhead in Cavalier's clothing.
Neither Borg nor Sampras has a theatri- cal nature. Sampras moves like a man in the middle of a bout of terminal depres- sion. Such people do not excite the love that flows towards the theatrical champions such as John McEnroe and Boris Becker.
Tennis is one of the most theatrical of all sports; Wimbledon, especially Centre Court, is one of sport's greatest theatres — the inti- macy, the sudden extraordinary changes of fortune compel the attention. But Sampras just hits the ball, generally uncommonly hard, hangs his head and walks about a bit. When he prepares to serve, he looks like a hunchback. He is the picture of misery.
There are just two things that Sampras does that give away his immense but nor- mally deeply hidden relish for the battle. The first is the final stage of his pre-serve routine. After he has done the usual busi- ness of staring balefully at the bit of court he is aiming for and bouncing the ball, he brandishes his racket. Not much. Just a small but unmistakable hint of menace. Abdul Qadir, the leg-spin bowler, used to show the ball to the batsman before begin- ning his run-up. The Sampras brandish reveals the same taste for combat, the same delight in confrontation: one against one.
The second give-away is in the famous slam-dunk shot. This, if not a personal invention, is certainly a personal trade- mark. It is a leaping overhead smash that slams the ball down in front of the oppo- nent, causing it to rise almost vertically and always unreachably.
But, for the most part, the Sampras nature is concealed by a cloak of excel- lence. It is not that his shots are not spec- tacular: he serves with as much power and brilliance as anyone in the game and, like the beloved Boris, he has the priceless knack of serving aces at the time of greatest need. His volleying is athletic and murder- ous, his passing shots go like a laser beam. Grand Slam titles are the way you judge a tennis player: Sampras now has 11. The all- time record-holder is Ken Rosewall with 12. It seems to be Sampras's destiny to be the best ever.
That, more or less by definition, cannot be boring. We must not confuse theatricali- ty with excellence. This is to misunderstand the essential nature of the athlete's task, which is to win. He has no responsibility at all for the audience's delight. Moral: sport is only incidentally entertaining.
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