So another Wimbledon comes to a close. Reckon I must have watched sixty hours of tennis the last two weeks. Weirdly enough, I think some of my favourite matches were from the women’s game. I know, I know, people will say that it’s not real tennis; that there’s no proper champions; that they barely hit the ball; that it’s just a case of passing it back and forth until one hasn’t strength enough to get it over the net; that they don’t deserve equal prize money, given the amount of time they spend on court and the vastly-diminished televisual audience and level of interest when compared with the men; that it’s just a procession of different yet the same not-quite-fanciable Eastern Europeans with unpronounceable, unrememberable names ending in ova, here one year, gone the next; that even the best women’s tennis player would be hard pushed to give the number six hundred in the men’s game a run for their money – but still, as far as I’m concerned, Date-Krumm vs Venus Williams and Sabine Lisicki vs Li Na were matches as good as any I’ve ever seen. Especially watching Lisicki: she had all the right ingredients. She smiled. She tried. She was a few steps beyond not-quite-fanciable – well and truly almost-fanciable, in fact – and the way she saved those two match points with a couple of big booming serves of a hundred and twenty miles an hour plus – and then served two more to win the game – was stunning. Such a shame she seemed so out-of-sorts in her semi against Sharapova. But if she keeps on smiling, and keeps on booming, she’s got a fan for life right here.
Other great matches I saw…well, it’s all become a bit of a blur right now. Baghdatis against Djokovic was awesome – especially those match points he saved, that would’ve surely took the roof off if it’d been on – and also the eventual champion’s next match against the always-entertaining Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Tsonga knows how to whip up a crowd – and it’s not exactly difficult. Sure, you smile. And make a few funny faces. And if you can throw yourself to the ground every now and then, even if you don’t really need to – so canny, that Tsonga! – then you’ve got ‘em in the palm of your hand. Nothing Wimbledon loves more than a diver. And the commentators ooh and aah and it makes you wonder if no one’s ever tried diving before, such is their amazement. But as a master-diver myself – hell, I dive on the badminton and squash courts, to quite successful effect, and would probably dive on concrete too, if I had to – I know it ain’t no big deal, and not that tricky – ‘specially on that lovely green grass – and I’m surprised that more of them don’t do it. Ah, the days of Yannick Noah and Jimmy Connors, Becker and Leconte! But it’s so easy to hark back.
And then we come to Murray. Andy Murray. Oh, Andy, Andy Murray. Whither was thou, man? Playing such awesome tennis, cruising through to the semis, bossing Nadal around for a set and a half – and then: one sloppy volley that would’ve given him two break points in the second and – boom! – it was all over. He was never in it again. Head down – head being shook – negative and defeatist and, yet again, so pessimistic, so lacking in the fighting spirit, so purely and woefully British. I know what he was thinking when he came to hit that shot: I know it ‘cos I do it myself, in squash, in ping pong, even in tennis (which I’m not much good at; I play like a girl). He was thinking: wow, easy volley for two break points, break him, win the set, two sets up, match in the bag – I’ve beaten Nadal! I’m in the final! – and then, wow, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna win Wimbledon, I’m lifting the trophy, imagine the headlines, imagine the smiles, the poor slumped head of my defeated opponent in his chair, the cameras flashing, the newspapers whirling, and after all those years, no more talk of Fred Perry, of Bunny Austin, of bloody Tim Henman, it’s all me me me, Andy Murray, Wimbledon Champion 2011 and – oh bugger, I’ve missed it. Well, how could he not? How could he hope to concentrate with all that going through his head? How could his body flow freely and do what comes so naturally with all that tension and excitement and adrenaline? And so he put it long. And then: oh shit, he’s got me, he’s beating me, I haven’t won, I’ve blown it, I got carried away and how could I be such a fool, will I get it back? No! Missed another one! I’ve lost it – I’m losing it. Losing the semi, losing the championship. Nadal’s gonna win, there’s nothing I can do. Oh why oh why oh why – never get carried away, never think like that, come back next year and –
It’s over. Murray’s gone. His head’s gone. Just play out the match and shake your head and think back to how many times we’ve been here before. Everybody knows. Everybody feels it. The crowd feels it as it’s happening and there’s nothing they can do. It’s the British mentality. We just don’t know how to win. Gallant losers, maybe. Plucky hearts and efforts, perhaps. But when it comes to the crunch – well, we’re just not Spanish, are we? We’re not Americans or Australians. We just don’t have that fight. Henman explains it and accepts it. But Becker and my Spanish roommate Diego are like, WTF? Maybe they can understand what was going through his head – but what they can’t quite grasp is why he didn’t sort it out, why he couldn’t put it behind him, fight on, shake off the demons of negativity and regain his belief. Yet how could they understand? They’re not British.
I wish I’d been good at tennis: I’d’ve given that crowd something to shout about. None o’ that petulance lark – and plenty of buffoonery, plenty of diving, plenty of giving my life for the cause. Your heart on your sleeve. A spring in your step. A cheeky Leconte wink and some of that handing-your-racket-to-the-ballboy and geeing the crowd up. So easy to win people over. They love a character. They’re the ones we remember.
And so, Baltacha and Murray and Robson try their best and, as ever, come close but come up short. Oh well, there’s always next year. And, of course, Murray’ll feel that his name’s written on that trophy somewhere in the future – just as Henman always did. And maybe it is, and maybe it’s not. Is he good enough? Sure he is – but that’s no guarantee of anything. A certain Malivai Washington got to the final once, not that long ago: there’s luck and weirdness to take into account too (Ivanisevic’s glorious rain god, anyone?) Still, another four or five years for him to have a crack – and if not him, someone else. And maybe one day a Brit who can embody some of that belief and that ability to win that other nations seem to manage so effortlessly – and perhaps that’ll change everything.
Anyways, let’s not forget that Murray’s only Scottish. And let’s not pretend that having him win would feel anywhere near as sweet as a bona fide Englishman’s victory. Do we really feel the same cheering him on as we did old Tim? I don’t.
...At some point in this tournament I noticed the commentator’s were doing my head in. And I realised why: it’s ‘cos they’re all ex-pros and they keep talking about the technical aspects of the game – spin and slice and unforced errors and serving it out wide and percentages – when what I really want is some posh old bloke with a velveteen voice enhancing the drama and the beauty who’s just as amazed and impressed as I am. How many staggering points were diminished by Greg Rusedski chipping in with some pointless insider’s insight that took all the magic out of what we had just witnessed? Henman and Becker and Castle and Petchey when I’d have given anything for Dan Maskell and his innocent delight mirroring that of the millions watching. How many times listening to someone talk about how a certain player “needed to get his first serve percentage up” – so what you’re saying is, he ought to try and hit more in rather than out? – instead of rejoicing in the glory of the whole occasion. Wows and OMGs and “He’s missed it!” Seems to me it’s gone this way in a lot of sports and I’m amazed people don’t seem to have picked up on it; amazed that the people in charge of the production companies think that the best way to enhance a viewer’s experience is to stuff a commentary box full of former players and have them take the game apart with all the skill and romance of a vivisectionist’s knife. But who’re the ones we remember? Ted Lowe. John Motson. Bill Threllfall. Old plummy-voiced posh blokes who understood that less is most often more. I mean, who’s gonna be mourning John “Personality Like A Turtle’s Fart” Lloyd when he’s dead and gone? At least McEnroe talks sense. But where’s the next generation of congenial old chaps who truly love the game and have the ability to impart that love? They’re the ones I want on my screen.
...Meanwhile, a couple of hundred thousand people were digging Glastonbury, the world’s biggest and, some would say, best music festival. I like the sound of that – I’m down with anything “biggest and best” that’s linked with our little island – but I really gotta wonder what Glastonbury’s become. Beyoncé? Coldplay? U2? Since when did Glastonbury become a festival of middle-of-the-road pop-rock? Who next year? Hootie and the Blowfish? But I guess things change: it’s not all hippies and drugs and grunge these days – not that I really like those things either – it’s posh girls in designer wellies and a bit of a lark in the country. Pah. Festivals, shmestivals: I’ve been to Glastonbury twice and, to be honest, I couldn’t give a monkeys anyhoo. First time was in 2000, when I was sort of in the area and wandered on down after hearing the fences had been smashed in. Sunday afternoon it was; I stayed for a couple of hours, walked here and there, and then got bored. And then, foolishly, I went for the full monty in 2003 – didn’t pay; worked for Oxfam doing a bit of stewarding – and I swear I spent the whole four days looking for somewhere quiet that didn’t smell of piss. Wasn’t easy. It was just noise, and retards, and crap activists, and pissed-up otherwise normal people sitting around little fires of burning plastic and metal seemingly undisturbed by the waves of black, toxic smoke that were washing over them. Mostly what I remember is these fires, and the people staring into them – people who probably wore suits and baulked at dirt any other time of the year – and it all just seemed to me like the whole thing was an attempt to create an instant third-world city in the Somerset countryside. It was pretty grim.
As for the music…well, I saw Radiohead, and I do love Radiohead. Although, when I say I saw, what I mean is that I stood in the middle of a massive crowd and, in the distance, looked sometimes at some specks on a stage, sometimes at some images on a screen – the same images people were watching on their TVs at home. But at least I was hearing them, right? Wrong. Mostly what I was hearing was the stupid bellowing of the drunks around me, out of tune and – well, credit where credit’s due – I suppose they were getting maybe half the lyrics right. Poor old Thom Yorke. He’s on the stage, looking out into the crowd, and he’s thinking, wow, this is awesome, look at all these people loving what we’re doing, feel the energy, man, dig this magical moment – we’re changing the world! And yet, the reality is this: some imbeciles bombed out of their skulls who just want something familiar they can sing along to and who actually enjoy the end of the song more than the content of it because that’s when they can scream and cheer and go “whoop!” and “yeah!” – which is what it’s all about, the music’s just the backdrop for that. It’s pearls before swine, mate. Give me a nice pair of headphones and a pure, unadulterated listening experience any day.
