Fans for a fortnight
MICHAEL HENDERSON
A bright young star won the men's final at Wimbledon. Roger Federer has long been regarded as the most talented player among the younger, post-Sampras generation, and the Swiss condemned Mark Philippoussis to a brutal defeat. The Aussie's big serve was not enough on this occasion, to everybody's relief. Tennis is full of boom-boom players. We could do with a few more from charm school.
As ever, though, Wimbledon fortnight saw the savaging of what is known as Middle England by . . well, by people who belong to it, if you really want to know. You might think that going along to cheer on Tim Henman was a pretty inoffensive thing to do, but to the gauleiters of metropolitan opinion it is more or less an admission that you keep a black shirt or two in your wardrobe.
Henman went out at the quarter-final stage, beaten handsomely by Sebastien Grosjean, a very handy Frenchie. and he is unlike
ly ever to win this greatest of tournaments. It's a shame, but it's not the end of the world. Though he is a decent player on grass, he is unable to take the major points in the major matches, throwing away four set points at the start of his match against Grosjean. That doesn't make him an ogre. It merely means that he is not as good as he would like to be, or as good as we would like him to be. There is something a bit silly about the matrons of `Henman Hill', as it is known, getting terribly excited about a player they don't consider for 50 weeks of the year, but they are not alone in their indifference. The British do not get worked up about tennis except when Wimbledon comes around. We are a minor power in tennis (non-existent, more like) but we do provide the world with its most famous championship.
Those spectators shriek a bit, and it can get tiresome. However, they do not assault others, pollute the air with their language, or leave a trail of broken glass throughout south London, unlike some of the people who follow another sport; people who, despite the evidence assembled over four decades of malice, still have their defenders. A smartypants columnist in the Independent wrote last year that unpleasant
ness at football grounds (foul abuse of players who don't play for 'your' side, that kind of thing) was all part of the fun. Not much has changed since Orwell wrote about those well-heeled English socialists who like to play with fire when they don't even know that fire is hot.
That inverted snobbery extends far beyond sport. A woman called Louise Doughty was on the wireless the other day, speaking lightly of P.D. James. I haven't read James's latest novel, but I have read enough of her work not to be put off by the patronising Doughty, who gave the impression that admirers of this fiction were slightly backward. Why? Because they longed for a cosy past, and that was simply not on. As James boasts about ten million readers more than Doughty, who is, apparently, a novelist herself. perhaps Miss D. should reconsider.
Wimbledon fortnight brings out the best in this country, and the worst. There is no summer of sport anywhere in the world to rival ours. and Wimbledon is slap-bang in the middle of it. So it is best to ignore the liberal snobs and simply enjoy the tournament, particularly when it produces a firstrate champion like Federer.
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