High life
Hot line to a goddess
Taki
The reason for the gloomy weather and the wettest ever June is Zeus. I know so because, long ago, the full-armoured lady that sprang from his head confided in me that her old man was a tennis fan. Mind you, I do not speak with the goddess Athena every day, but when the lousy weather was threatening to cancel Wimble- don altogether, I got on the hot line to Olympus. 'Yes, he's mad as hell and won't take it any more,' she said about the king of the gods. 'He's had it with tennis in gen- eral and Wimbledon in particular.'
Zeus is pissed off because the rocket launchers that pass for tennis rackets nowa- days have made ground strokes redundant. There are fewer rallies on grass than there are Maltese gentlemen. Soon there will be serving contests and nothing else. The man who serves the fastest and puts in more serves within a time limit will be declared Wimbledon champion. He will serve unop- posed. The Duchess of Kent will then ring the server — wherever he may be, on his aeroplane, in bed, even serving somewhere else — to inform him that he has become the All-England club champion. C'est tout.
This is the bad news. The even worse news is that the game's own Mike Tyson John McEnroe — is asking for players to be less civil towards each other. 'Desper- ately short of personality' is what's wrong with tennis, according to the man who, in my not so humble opinion, played a large part in its ruin. He wants more hate and worse manners on court. So what else is new? Well, if Marcelo Rios, the loutish Chilean, bit off Boris Becker's ear while the German was towelling off, I imagine it would bring some excitement to the serving contest, but then so would murder on cen- tre court. The way society is going, we might be seeing an ear or two being spat out in the near future. (Incidentally, Teddy Atlas, Tyson's ex-trainer, went on record last week predicting that Tyson would foul and be disqualified rather than get knocked out.) As late as 1960, players from humble backgrounds, however talented, adhered to the protocol of the game established by the upper class. Tennis whites were de rigueur. The uniformity signified that the game was larger and more important than the indi- vidual. Good sportsmanship was also important. In the 1940 tennis finals of the American championships at Forest Hills, Don McNeill threw a point to Bobby Riggs during a fifth set match point in his favour because he refused to win on a bad call. Players now give the umpire the finger. The wife of Jeff Tarango attacked an ump a couple of years ago. Modern-day athletes have become today's gladiators, performing in a televised version of the Roman circuses. Instead of developing character, modern sport tends to forgive felonies. Tyson should have been suspended long ago for his out-of-the-ring behaviour. Ditto many American pro ath- letes. Our very own Dennis Wise, captain of Cup winner Chelsea, was guilty of assault on an aged taxi driver but was not forced to do a Taki in Pentonville. In America, universities serve as farm clubs for professional teams. Only in America can a star athlete graduate from a top uni- versity while barely knowing how to read or write.
Even the handshake, universal symbol of goodwill and good sportsmanship, is under attack. A Simi Valley, California, high school has banned it for fear the hand- shake after a sporting event might turn into a brawl. Some 'athletes' were spitting on their hands before shaking. Others shook with one hand and punched with the other. It is called a rage to win by slobs like McEnroe.
Last but not least, let's stop calling sports heroes artists. They are nothing of the kind. If, say, a professional pianist commit- ted as many mistakes during a concert as, say, the good sportsman and great player Pete Sampras commits unforced errors during a match, he would be booed off the stage and pelted with more fruit and veg- etables than are grown in California and Florida combined. The patches of absolute brilliance that great athletes occasionally come up with are the standards by which real artists are judged throughout their careers. The hacks should stop this 'tem- peramental artist' b—t. And now I'm looking forward to watching the gracious Martina Hingis play. Women's tennis is the only game in town.
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