Wimbledon
Six o'clock shadow
Ferdinand Mount
There is something interestingly shock- ing about tennis players deciding to Stand Up for Jesus. Bunny Austin, the last Englishman to reach the Final, shocked his generation when he dedicated his life to Moral Rearmament; he claimed that was why he was shut out of the All-England Club for 20 years. (Curiously, nobody thinks anything of Catholics crossing them- selves on court, although we might think it odd if an English RC sportsman did it, such as A. A. Waugh, the West Somerset croquet player.) The All-England Club said Austin had merely failed to renew his subscription and must wait his turn to be readmitted. The real reason was always thought to be because Austin had left England in March 1939 to join Dr Buch- man in the United States. Tory majors asked questions in the House of Commons, linking Austin with Auden and Isherwood. By coincidence, Fred Perry had already been stripped of his membership when he turned pro after winning Wimbledon for
the third time So for a decade the two best British players since the first world war some would say the only two great players — were out in the cold. -
Yet so often the remarkable thing about religious commitment among tennis play- ers — as among the rest of us — is how little it seems to improve behaviour. Chang is a delightful player, but the grace of Andre Agassi, another born-again Christ- ian, does not seem exactly abounding. Even Bunny was not flawless in that respect. When he got cross with himself while losing his quarter-final in 1934, he took a flying kick at the racquet and sent it cartwheeling among the spectators. In an apologia in the Daily Express, he excused this as 'a gesture by a player of mild annoyance, made in the heat of the mo- ment, when nerve-strain is at its height'. All of which sounds slightly familiar.
The truth has to be confronted. Great tennis players are not always great human beings. Some may be excused on grounds of mere stupidity. James Thurber, after covering one Forest Hills tournament, said he had considered comparing the intellec- tual capacities of tennis champions to those of wallabies, but he did not wish to be unkind to wallabies. As far as sense of humour goes, a face flannel would be a reasonable comparison. Jimmy Connors, the mellowed darling of the crowds, gets a marginally questionable line call; for the next ten minutes, he laboriously explains by word and gesture to the line judge how to signal out, commends the example of another linesman's loud out call, then collapses in mock amazement when his victim calls out a ball which threatens to clear the back netting. All this heavy horsing around remains, as it began, a Primarily American disease. Approximate- ly 90 seconds after starting to watch my first match, I heard a querulous American voice demanding a quite unjustified let with the words: 'Amazing how bad umpires are everywhere in the world'. This was Dan Goldie, ranked number 48 in the world, his ill-humour excused on the grounds that he had not won a match fdr months, although he won this one. Yet the peculiar thing is that each year the spectators dress more and more like the players, as though they hoped to absorb some of the vital juices by wearing sports shirts with pastel splodges across them and tennis shorts and white socks and big chunky tennis shoes with those air cushions in the heel which look like built-in spirit levels. This is a strange reversal of the process by which, ever since Bunny Austin pioneered the wearing of shorts' t Wimbledon, the players' clothes had gra- dually distanced themselves from ordinary day wear. And what have all these fans, some quite stricken in years, got in their big, floppy, shoulder-slung sports bags? Perhaps they have brought along a couple of tennis racquets, as if to carry the fantasy one stage further: 'Mr Lendl's opponent on Court One has not turned up — could you possibly . . . ?'
Lendl looks less convincing than ever on grass, and is hard put to win a five-setter with Nicolas Pereira, from Venezuela, junior Wimbledon champion last year, conqueror of Edberg at Queen's and just as good a prospect as Chang. The anti- grass school goes on complaining about the low bounce, the uncertainty, the excessive speed, but Lendl demonstrates the beauti- ful exactions of grass, if only in a negative way, since with all his power he remains too ungainly to master the dabs and punches and low pick-ups that come natur- ally to Edberg and Becker.
With today's light racquets, the require- ment to be delicate at speed is even more pressing. Donald Budge in the late 1930s used a 17 oz racquet, which in Perry's words you had to be a dock worker to lift. McEnroe used to win Wimbledon with a green Dunlop 200G, at 14 ounces the last of the heavy racquets. My new acquisition, a Wilson Ceramic, weighs a mere 12 oz and feels as light as fly-whisk. The idea of a pottery racquet is unsettling, like a con- crete parachute. Could one market a Ber- nard Leach Pro Suresmash? But the thing does, or would in the right hands, do the equivalent of turning on a sixpence.
The courts too, I think, require more finesse than ever. My theory is that this is because, in 1980, the groundsman went over to a Dutch ryegrass mixture which is sappier, even in a dry spell, than the old fine mixture of 80 per cent agrostis to 20 per cent fescue. It grows quicker too, which is all right if you do not mind mowing, but by the end of the day it begins, like a swarthy Greek, to need a second shave. By six or seven o'clock, it seemed to me that the players were having to scoop the ball off the ground, but that only makes for a more thrilling and ex- quisite display, which both Connors and Chang certainly gave.
As for winners, Becker and Edberg remain the pick of the men, with Steffi Graf on her own ahead of the women, until Monica Seles reaches the age of 16 at least. Anxieties about the revival of German dominance are unlikely to be assuaged here.
`What, pray, is a tickling stick?'
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