SPECTATOR SPORT
Imputing mixed motives
Frank Keating
DROWNED perhaps by the slosh of rain and the slurp of dollars, at least the hermaphroditic grunt of the women com- petitors seems more muted this year at Wimbledon. It has certainly helped that the No 1 seed and ace champ of the orgasmic yelpers, Monica Seles, a cartoon- ist's daughter, mysteriously cried off (doubtless literally) on the eve of the tournament. Me Tarzan, you chap. As that beefy and uncompromising South African Davis Cupper of several summers ago, Abe Segal, muttered cringingly on the concourse, 'Some of these new young women players shouldn't be allowed out here alone — they could fell us all with one hand.' With, of course, an accompanying grunt.
Nevertheless what finds out the femin- ists' monstrous Equal Pay Commission is the mixed doubles. The militant molls should never have mixed with Mixed. The women's half of the duo is the weak link in any team. Invariably.
Watch how the sole tactic in Mixed is to contrive to play the ball whenever possible over the net to the side where the distaff opponent is operating. Or as the famous old US coaching pro and guru, Art Hoppe, more succinctly put it in his classsic manu- al: 'The only proper method for playing Mixed Doubles is to hit the ball — ideally as if by accident — straight at the woman opponent as hard and as accurately as possible.'
Jack Kramer was more delicate when he told me about always having to put on a Mixed Doubles when his 'circus' toured the world in the 1950s. He usually had to play with Gussy Moran, long on legs, short on skill. 'You had to make a show of exclaim- ing "Good shot!" whenever she managed to get one ball back. As for playing your opponents, the only rule is to lob to the lady always, in a spot where the gent cannot cheat, run round her, and take it.' Two decades before Kramer won Wimble- don, the homosexual, Bill Tilden, was champion three times. To Bill, the battle of the sexes was writ large — 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. In those days it was compulsory to enter the Mixed. Unlike Jack, Tilden boasted he had never, ever, once congratulated a woman partner on a winning shot: 'Anticipation is just a dame's fancy word for guessing right'. In his autobiography, Tilden wrote: `Women partners are a lot of bitches. They emasculate. Women on the same side of the net as you wear down a man.'
The onliest Stephen Potter, maestro of upmanship, phrased exactly the same thoughts with a more subtle gallantry, but just as wicked. His two most important rules for Mixed Doubles were: 'I. Know how to apologise profusely to your female opponent for lobbing into the sun; 2. When changing ends, know exactly when to stand elaborately aside in order to allow her to come by first; and equally, on another occasion, when to allow her the minimum room for getting by.'
Mind you, Potter's pal, Odoreida, was even more devious. Whenever he was due to play Mixed, he would beforehand leave on a bench in the adjoining ladies' locker- room his privately printed pamphlet enti- tled Why Women Cannot Play Squash Rackets — 'always open on page 3, on which there was a large diagram of the female skeleton with the thigh-bones col- oured ultramarine'.
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