I APOLOGISE in advance to tennis enthusiasts, whose sport I would not normally think of denigrating: if only because, most of the time, I go to great lengths to avoid watching it. But like everybody else, I was sucked into that record-breaking match at Wimbledon this week. And epic as it was, it also confirmed my prejudice about everything that’s wrong with the game.
Yes, the players’ stamina was remarkable. There, however, the entertainment ended. The only really interesting thing about the spectacle was its longevity. And you could admire that same quality in, for example, a pair of giant turtles. But you’d have to be a herpetologist with an anorak to linger at the zoo’s turtle enclosure for more than three minutes at a time.
It’s true that, at 54-all on Wednesday, one was tempted to stay with the Wimbledon coverage rather than miss the breakthrough, when it finally came. On the other hand, the very length of the match inevitably provoked contrasting reflections on the shortness of life. As well as which,
Germany V Ghana was on other channels.
Then there was the grunting. I realise that – not to point fingers at any tennis-playing gender in particular – this is not as big a problem in the five-set format, as the shorter one. Even so, every time he served the other night, the 6ft 9 American emitted a howl of apparent pain, as if his arm was being wrenched from its socket.
He had good reasons to be in pain, too, after nine hours (as it then was) and counting. But this didn’t make listening to him any easier. And whatever excuse he had does not apply to most of the grunting and screaming for which tennis has become infamous.
I have long held the suspicion – again based more on prejudice than empirical study – that the names of tennis players have an unusually high tendency to sound like medical conditions. It started with Vitas Gerulaitis, the big-haired Lithuanian-American of the 1970s, whose name always suggested an acute inflammation of the kidneys.
But it continues today, when it is not unusual to hear of a match between, say, Kim “Clijsters” and Elena “Dementieva”: both of whom sound like they need medication. I don’t know if this curious phenomenon explains the tortured sounds associated with the sport. Either way, spectators with sensitive ears would themselves need pain relief sometimes.
Then there’s that other sound effect of televised tennis: the commentary. A match as long as that between Isner and Mahut made special demands of presenters, admittedly. But they must have picked up tips from those masters of all-day patter: BBC radio’s cricket commentators. Like Irish dancing, cricket is not something that should work on radio. Yet it does, thanks to the commentary teams, whose wit and eccentricity is often embellished by a patchwork of accents from all corners of England’s former empire.
By contrast, the range of accents used in televised tennis ranges from public-school posh to public-school posher, and their utterances are relentlessly bland. Consider even the late “voice of tennis”, Dan Maskell. Yes, he had a pleasant velvety timbre. But did he ever say anything memorable? Well, I note from the archives that he is credited with once introducing a doubles team as follows: “The Gullikson twins here. An interesting pair, both from Wisconsin.” That aside, his most famous quotation was: “Oh, I say!” This is a quintessentially English phrase, suggesting extreme admiration or surprise. But consisting as it does of a promise to express oneself, followed only by an exclamation mark and no further comment, it is hardly a fitting epitaph for a professional communicator.
Of course, the biggest drawback of the Wimbledon epic was its predictability. There was only one plot-line in the drama: namely that neither man could break the other’s serve. Among their many records, both players beat the previous highest number of “aces” in a match: statistics that were cited in awe by the commentators.
But you can sometimes have too many aces: and not just in a Mafia-run poker tournament.
Even tennis lovers will concede that the dominance of the serve, especially in the men’s game, militates against entertainment. So if I may be so bold, having watched my first (and probably last) tennis match of the year, I have some suggestions as to how the sport might be improved.
First, it should adopt a rule from cricket and henceforth limit the number of deliberately-played aces to one per game. Thus, every time some giant sent a bullet down the middle of the court at 130mph, missing the nervous ball-boy by inches, the umpire would raise a finger to indicate: “That’s your one”.
But tennis authorities might also consider modifying the equipment. Nets could be made taller, to match the players. Rackets could be shrunk. And if even that fails to make the game less predictable, I suggest something even more drastic.
Yes, they should get those geniuses behind the World Cup’s Jabulani to do a similar redesign on the tennis ball. And all right, in the short term, this might involve injuring the odd Wimbledon spectator, as attempted aces would fly 15ft over the end-line and take out members of the British royal family. But players would adapt, eventually. The under-arm serve might be reintroduced. And soon you’d have a whole new game.