Sport I
Lyric tennis
Brigid Brophy
The trouble with going to Wimbledon is that you miss so much of the tennis. It's thought to be television that has brought in the crowds. As a result, the only place where you can now be sure of seeing a match is at home, on television. In my teens I watched the 1948 men's singles final from a second-row bench without really trying — without debenture, clout or queueing, just by arriving a bit early. That would now be as deep in daydreamland as winning the title. On the other hand, the All England Club is much nicer to visit now than then. The ivy-infested Centre Court still disputes with Glyndebourne the claim to be the ugliest edifice open to the public in England, but since the game went pro the spectators have gone prole, to the vast improvement of manners and ambience. No more social aggressors demonstrating they Know Their Way Around; just patient family outings, beer and ice cream.
At home, unless you forego the scorecalling and the distinctive noises of netcords and mis-hits, you have to leave the sound turned up, which means you get the commentary. Goodness knows why television assumes tennis needs commentary. Spectators at Wimbledon manage to see a sizzling crosscourt return without being told that that's what they've just seen. Why shouldn't televiewers? It may be professional envy that makes commentators so governessy about poor !lie Nastase. His talents obviously include a natural turn for delivering commentary on matches while he plays them. This year Dan Maskell affronted syntax as usual (`That gives he and his partner break point') and seemed to pass on his ineptitude with words to the papers, more than one of which described Martina Navratilova as a Czech 'expatriot'. The introduction of Mark Cox to the microphone produced a new vocabulary of surrealism. A breeze on court, he remarked from experience, 'can throw your service out of Limbo'. (Perhaps the Prince of Wales will pursue the doctrinal point.) This year Jimmy Connors changed the grunt that used to accompany his service into a hiss like the air brakes on a heavy goods vehicle; and Nastase presented to the public a front face unexpectedly resembling the Turin Shroud, after joining Bjorn Borg in a resolve to pass through the championships unshaven. Perhaps they were proving that a tournament is a tourney and the contestants still subject to the vows and vigils of chivalry. Perhaps they were just showing that, although, by pleading their entertainment value, the women have got their prize money increased, there are still some entertaining games women can't play.
In fact the women were still the victims . of minor prejudice. Evonne Goolagong has spoken up or, rather, by using her maiden name in the USA, gestured up against Wimbledon's insistence on changing a woman player's playing name if she marries in mid-career. That had made Ms Goolagong into one of two Mrs Cawleys in the tournament, but it is the practice in general, not just the flukes, that needs remedy. Now the players are paid, there is no excuse for denying them the freedom given to professional actresses and writers. This anachronism, I expect, will vanish pretty soon, if only because it's commercial nonsense to hazard brand loyalties by re-naming the brand. Another happening, however, put me in mind of 1975, when Arthur Ashe was acclaimed as the first Black to win Wimbledon, quite as though it hadn't been won, in 1957 and 1958, by Althea Gibson. This year paragraphs gushed about how Borg might, might not and finally did equal Fred Perry's record (since the abolition of the challenge round) of three singles titles in a row, but no one spared a sentence to say that that supposedly unique feat had already been performed by three women (Helen Wills, Louise Brough and Maureen Connolly).
It was a year when service return often prevailed over service, and lyric over heroic tennis. Much thought had clearly been given, out on the circuits, to how to circumvent the heavy servers, and I Si'spect that, when Wimbledon fortnight arrived, the unsunbaked grass helped the counter attack. The result was Tom Okker intelligently running in under the guns of that stately Argentinian galleon Guillermo Vilas: the best demonstration of playing the opponent, as distinct from playing one's own game and succeeding or failing according to how fluently it's going, since the final where Ashe had studied how Connors might be defeated and, by taking thought, defeated him. Okker next sang his duet with Nastase. The delight then was that each played his own game and it was the same game.
Against Borg, however, neither thought nor power could prevail. Borg carried
both light and heavy armament, and has made himself the master of all modes as of all surfaces. The one thing he doesn't yet do is catch the imagination. I made a correct prediction of both singles champions this year, but in Borg's case I uttered it with the same helas that I find myself appending to my opinion that he is the finest player certainly since the war and quite conceivably since the game began. He plays clever, original, imaginative tennis. Yet, as you watch, the heart won't take fire. It's like listening to brilliant and witty dialogue spoken in a flat voice.
Ms Navratilova, by contrast, has considerable power over a spectator's heart, including that of drawing it into the mouth. Her semi-final with Ms Goolagong afforded the purest pleasure lyric tennis can give. Even her final, though seldom lovely tennis, was a much more intellectually and emotionally engaging contest than finals usually are. As a match player, she has only two disabilities. She won't make an ungainly stroke,_ even when nothing else will do; and she'd sooner forfeit the point than play a banal, merely bread-and-butter shot. She and Nastase are players of the (to my taste) most exciting kind, because they are always in danger of losing through sheer talent. O Brigid Brophy 1978
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