FESTIVAL OF THE ID

Ferdinand Mount on the

way the press like tennis stars to remain adolescent

Wimbledon AFTER the match, we scuttle away from the crowds through a little iron gate, down a flight of steps leading under the Centre Court, along a passage and into a hot, airless box of a room full of American reporters, rumpled and slow-spoken. They look as if they have been sleeping down here tor weeks waiting for the newsbreak. For this is the cave of making, the sound- proofed womb of Wimbledon, from which scandals, feuds and flare-ups spring or are untimely ripped. One by one, the players come down the fallopian tube from the dressing-room, all soft and babyish in their fleecy apres-match rompers, each accom- panied by a grown-up minder from the All-England Club. McEnroe, red-eyed, tousle-headed, looks like those little boys in Maurice Sendak stories who are woken up in the night to find themselves hurtling through a starry sky. The first inquiries are solicitous, almost tender: Hey John, are you wearing a new shoe?

Before Paris, they gave me a new shoe, it's more comfortable, gives my foot a bit more room. (They give him things and They take them away; the world is full of Them).

John, were the crowd annoying you? Not a bit.

Then (and here the tenderness dis- appears) why did you tell them to shut up?

I dunno (child hauled up, dumbly wooden).

John, are you happy with your game? You missed a few easy volleys.

I don't think I'd win the tournament if I went on playing like that (he wouldn't, but he won't go on playing like that). I have this problem. I've been feeling like a little bit flat all this year. I've had the problem before (the world is full of problems lying in wait for him, problems and things — this thing with the crowd, the Wimbledon thing, things that go bump in the sports pages).

That why you lost the French, John?

That's not the reason. That's a lousy reason. Don't ask me if you don't want to know. You can write your own article.

On it goes, edgier and edgier. McEnroe tries to talk like adults talk, how he's always said how good Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg were, how good it will be for the game if there are a few new guys, how nobody wants to change Wimbledon from grass. But nobody wants to encour- age McEnroe to turn himself into a con- ventional hero, concerned for the future of the game. He isn't like that, and nobody really wants him to be like that. Nobody wants him to pretend to be growing old, let alone up.

For modern Wimbledon is a festival of the Id. All the titillation is in the clash between teenage and middle age, between the primal scream and the code of conduct. Humbert Humbert ought to be prowling the outside courts on what would be Ladies Day if the rain had not played havoc with the schedule. For there on court after court are 16-year-old nymphets, still puppying and squeaking, but capable of bawling at grey-haired, green-blazered lineswomen in a Brooklyn contralto: `Whadya mean by it? How far out does the ball have to be before ya call? Didn't ya see that ball?' And, ah, the thrill when she unleashes that menac- ing grunt as she pounds her first serve into the net and reaches into her knickers for the second.

And some of the girls still play like girls. They take wild swings, and get out of breath and do dear little floppy backhands. The reporters for once are engaged in a conspiracy of kindness and don't say just how immature quite well-known players really are. The news that the authorities are to do something to discourage preco- cious teenagers from being overstretched comes as a relief all round.

The men don't come here until they're strong enough, and these days they are all pretty strong. There is no such thing as getting an easy draw — which is why stars who will not accommodate their game to grass or bother to tune up for Wimbledon by playing on grass at Beckenham or Queen's tend to come to grief. Mats Wilander, the Swedish number four seed, who came to Wimbledon as champion of France and Australia, and thus with a theoretical chance of completing the Grand Slam, never looked a remotely likely contender from the moment he came on court with the pleasant, harassed man- ner of a young pastor in an unknown Ibsen play who has come to found a school in Gloomsholm.

Slobodan Zivojinovic, a hefty but grace- ful Yugoslav, not only served twice as hard, he was much more delicate and precise. The truth is that for all the talk of the artistic superiority of clay courts their principal characteristic is that you can get away with sloppier and shorter shots on them. In the next round, Heinz Guen- thardt, the experienced Swiss player, gave Zivojinovic a lesson in how to cope with pace — and also a lesson in nicechap- manship. Every time the Yugoslav served a real thumper, Guenthardt would smile and shake his sensitive Swiss head as if in wonder at the existence of such power. The Yugoslav strained to thump harder still; Guenthardt began to float the ball past him down the sidelines, achieving ever greater precision, and without trying to match his opponent seemed to be hitting the ball quite hard too.

As the grass dries and the sun comes out, so the players blossom. Vijay Amritraj ambles his way past Yannick Noah in a match of great charm, only to be outsmiled by Guenthardt in the next round. One of my favourite players, Kevin Curren, was playing as well as anyone in the first week and went on to dispose of Edberg with tremendous zap, hitting his serve wide enough to scare the crowds in the side aisles, to earn a quarter-final against an ever improving McEnroe. Becker played as everyone hoped he would, belting ever- thing and winning the hard points. But Lendl was fatally wooden against Henri Leconte, a fast-armed and short-swinging player who allows no time for guessing where he is going to put the ball.

Leconte looks like one of those beefy young ouvriers in overalls with a lick of hair flopping over his brow who gets into trouble, in early Jean Gabin films. The crowd love him. But by now the crowd love everyone. Some of them even clap an elderly lady who is carried out on a stretcher, then they clap again when the umpire reports that she is all right and was merely overcome by the heat. Perhaps it would not be so bad to die at Wimbledon on the second Tuesday (if fine).