Tennis
Play of the day
Harry Eyres
CT t will get worse. [It] will combine
'structural infantilism with hardnosed technology. It will be harsh, and it will lack both modesty and humour.' Anthony Burgess, in a fine article published recently in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, was writing about the the putative state of the English language in 2020, but he could just as well have been referring to the game of tennis in 1984. The last of the qualities he mentions, humour, has disappeared from tennis with the passing (as a leading player) of lie Nastase, and even his clowning was often of a desperate, sad kind, an excuse for the relative failure of a peerless talent. Modesty may not always be a virtue in a tennis player, but we can be fairly sure that the serene self-containment — which is part of modesty — of a Rosewall will not be seen again in a top player. And I need hardly mention baseline nymphets with balls in their knickers. In the 1974 Wimble- don final, the veteran Rosewall was des- troyed by the young Jimmy Connors, who at 31 is now considered almost a veteran himself, but whose harshness, as we saw the other day at Queen's, has not dimi- nished in the last decade. As for the combination of structural infantilism and
hardnosed technology, isn't that a pretty good description of too many games of men's singles these days, with their end- lessly repeated patterns of bullet-like serve and simple volley?
I do not wish, however, simply to add to the volleys of moral reproof mixed with Taus temporis acti which are served up every year during Wimbledon fortnight. Isn't it time something was done about the game? we ask. The Code of Conduct must be enforced. McEnroe must be dealt with. But nothing happens. McEnroe, and others, continue to abuse everything, and everyone, in sight. I was in fact hoping to be able to point out that McEnroe is not the only badly behaved player around — the talented young Australian Pat Cash, for instance, is no mean racket abuser — but at Queen's McEnroe showed that he is still streets ahead in this department, as in so many others. Connors, I thought, was nastier, but McEnroe extracted the last ounce of adverse publicity from a trivial incident. It gave the Sunday correspon- dents their cue for the expected fulmina- tions and dark hints about a possible shoot-out between John 'the Kid' and the forces of law headed by Sherriff 'Buzzer' Hadingham of the All England Club. It sounds a bit like the War of Independence, and it seems fair to suggest that the Yank might be quicker on the draw. Desmond Lynam rubbed in the patriotic message on the afternoon of the Queen's final, which coincided with the inevitable athletics from Gateshead: 'We've seen three enormous wins this afternoon: Ovett and Coe won like gentlemen, and McEnroe . . . won.' The latest excitement is that some of the more Wodehousian elements of the Con- servative Party are apparently campaigning to get McEnroe banned, or at least to teach him a lesson; though anyone who believes that a visit to the House of Commons would inculcate good manners must spend very little time in the Chamber.
Perhaps one should take what one reads about McEnroe in the press a little less than seriously. Journalists are rude about him, but then he is not exactly polite about them. And there is the suspicion that it is not only his insults about their mental ability which rile them, but also the fact that his one-liners tend to be better than theirs. By making his comments both sharp and audible, he offends against the rule that players should be seen but not heard. Things were easier in the days of Borg, who could make John Barrett sound like Demosthenes.
There are other grounds for thinking that the attacks of the Superbrat school of journalism are, if not hypocritical, then simply irrelevant. What people are shock- ed by, or profess to be shocked by, in McEnroe is his anger. But one thing which emerged from the innumerable pre- Wimbledon profiles of the unfortuante `British hope' Jo Durie was that anger is an essential quality in a modern tennis player. Her tyrannical coach Alan Jones (`he wouldn't allow me to have boyfriends even if I wanted them') wages a constant and largely unsuccessful war against her 'nice- ness'. So far she has only earned his approval by turning nasty on one occasion, when she demolished a courtside flower- bed with a vicious backhand. The players other players admire most seem to be Martina Navratilova and Jimmy Connors, neither the sort of chap 'Buzzer' Hading- ham would be likely to have much in common with. Ivan Lendl, who is actually a rather pleasant person, and looks it when he is knocking up with his mentor Woytek Fibak, has been trained to cultivate his grim, unsmiling manner on court. These players cannot afford to be gentlemen.
One thing we should be grateful to Martina for is the virtual disappearance of those baseline nymphets I mentioned ear- lier. One by one, these precocious, not very attractive hothouse shoots have with- ered away under her mature and masterful assaults. Tracy Austin seems to have pack- ed up, and Andrea Jaeger is reported to be suffering from mental exhaustion, a condi- tion often provoked in others by her interminable rallying. At Eastbourne in fact, following Queen's, there were signs of hope. That most despised form of tennis, ladies' doubles, provided one of the most entertaining matches televised in a long time. Catherine Tanvier and Cathy Jordan were the winners, and though Miss Tanvier is 19, blonde, and from what I could see on my Ingrams-like black-and-white televi- sion, very pretty, she did not play like a baseline bore. The standard, especially of volleying, was extremely high, but the game was at least recognisable as that pleasant pastime of many an English sum- mer's day, lawn tennis. The game McEn- roe, Lendl & Co. play is really quite different, and should probably be judged by different rules.
`Let's try to get Prince Andrew on Dallas!'
Previous page
