Postscript
Thugs
P.J. Kavanagh
It will nearly be over by the time this
appears, but I have become more and more sceptical of the coy public references to the approach of the Wimbledon Cham- pionships. 'Strawberries and cream, cham- pagne among the lawns' is the cry, and the Daily Express goes so far as to say: 'If you don't like Wimbledon you don't like life.'
There seems an element of bullying in this. Apart from a mild curiosity about the price of those 'strawberries and cream', and about the possibility of ever reaching such things among the thousands of other strug- gling punters (a surprising number of whom, it appears, appear in court next day accused of undue familiarity) my main feel- ing is that Wimbledon is not like that at all, has become both boring and unlovely and it does not suit too many people to admit this.
A parallel case of institutionalised decep- tion used to be observable during the broadcast of the Cup Final. Year after year a plump man in a white suit would conduct the crowd in what David Coleman always called the 'traditional' singing of 'Abide with me'. A glance at his monitor would have shown him that the crowd, very pro- perly refusing to have tradition imposed, was not singing that hymn at all but something quite different, many things quite different, and the bossy man in the white suit was wagging his stick in vain, ex- cept for the cooperation of a few embar- rassed figures in the Royal Box. Yet for years David Coleman persisted in telling us that something traditional and 'moving' was happening which the evidence of our eyes and ears told us was not.
I believe we are being similarly conned about Wimbledon. It now consists of a series of money-crazed thugs, male and female, restraining themselves with difficul- ty (but for how much longer?) from inflic- ting physical damage on each other, the umpire, the linesmen and the crowd. These same brutal people are then fawned upon by the commentators, in whose interests it is to keep the whole brutal charade going. I agree with Russell Davies who said he had had quite enough of 'the Pits', as he called them, during the previous week at Queen's, and as far as he was concerned he didn't care whether there was a television blackout of Wimbledon or not.
It is not just the bad behaviour of the players, it is the expression on their faces. They all seem to play in a condition of misery, in the grip of a grief too great to bear, as though they have just suffered the loss of someone dearer than life itself, like a sponsor.
• I will be told that this is 'pressure', they are playing for high stakes etc. Nonsense. They are all as rich as Croesus and athletes have always fiercely wanted to win. The last player I saw smile was Evonne Cawley, and she was under the same pressure as everybody else. What is gone is the idea of grace.
What happened to smiling, incidentally? The young don't do it much. I think it comes from America, the Clint-Eastwood- effect, the concept of 'cool'. To be called charming is to be called lightweight. But if the going is tougher than it has ever been (is it?) then grace under pressure, lightness of touch, is more necessary. Only the spoiled are surly.
These players snarl. You really cannot watch somebody for a couple of hours if his or her mouth is set permanently at twenty- five past seven. I do not yearn for a lost nonchalance — though I find Connors's grunts as unappealing as McEnroe's whines; I do not speak as a fuddy-duddy but as an unreconstructed adolescent. What I would really like is to umpire one of McEnroe's matches so that I could climb down my ladder and punch him on the nose. Then I would gladly (at the risk of having my bottom pinched) go in search of champagne and, ideally, of Evonne Cawley.
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