Some thoughts on a tennis tournament from the olden days...

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."

L.P. Hartley.

No, not J. R. Hartley. 

“Flaming” June has been a bit of a damp squib. A three-day heat wave aside, last week, it’s been pretty poor much of the time. From thirty-three degrees to fifteen. The weather has been as extreme as the political situation. That said, the grey skies make the blue ones so much more pleasant when they do arrive. May being so sunny, June has just seemed most disappointing, particularly as it can be so delightful. Each of the summer months has its own particular joy. June for me has the magic of the summer solstice and it was sunny this year - it’s not so magic when it’s raining - often the first real heat and tennis of course. Well, except in times like this when the world has been shut down.

 June was always tennis month for me. If May was about the cup final, June was Queen’s Club and then Wimbledon. Queen’s Club, in Baron’s Court, West London, was known as the Stella Artois tournament in the 80’s when I first got into tennis. The pre-cursor to Wimbledon and beginning of the brief joy that is the grass court season. Much smaller in scale than Wimbledon but favoured by many of the top players as it gave them a chance to warm their heels and get a feel for the speedy, often slippery grass courts before the main event in leafy SW11. A surface for cows as Ivan Lendl once said. That didn’t stop him trying his best to win the thing. Wimbledon that is. He won Queen’s Club twice but never Wimbledon. I was happy about this. I was a Stefan Edberg fan, one of the best volleyers of all time, impeccably polite and with a stunningly elegant backhand. This takes nothing away from Lendl’s achievements. He was a brilliant player. His brutal power game from the back of the court just didn’t really suit my tastes. Looking back now, his game doesn’t seem so brutal. Racquets have changed the game beyond belief and he actually did serve and volley at times and he used a single-handed backhand. Modern tennis is exceptional but the double-handed backhand - which is almost ubiquitous, a few notable exceptions aside: Federer, Wawrinka and Gasquet, for example - is a classic example of beauty being sacrificed for efficiency.
            I look back with affection to those pleasant days in stark contrast to today’s globalized banality, irrational hysteria and general ‘look at me, look at me' show-offery. Something about the whole atmosphere calmed my soul. I love tennis on all surfaces but those grass courts in the June sunshine were magic. They still are, of course. The tennis has changed a bit, for the better overall, I’d say. That’s a fact that nostalgia cannot alter. There’s not so much serve and volley these days which is a bit of a pity, there’s the better racquets giving greater power and control and there’s better haircuts; Christo Van Rensberg anyone? It is, of course, no longer sponsored by Stella either. It’s hard to imagine a top tennis tournament taking the name of a beer in 2020. Especially one whose nickname is “wife beater”. It's sponsored by Fever Tree these days, in fact. How gentrified we've all become. In all fairness it probably has a better ring to it than 'sponsored by Schweppes'.

The other pre-cursor grass event to Wimbledon is in Halle, Western Germany. A quaint, low-key event nestling among the rolling, green hills of Westphalia, it couldn’t be further in style from the Pimm’s brigade and corporate hospitality of Queen’s. I’ve been lucky to attend it twice with a tennis chum and it’s a delight. A low-key, mostly German crowd of all ages, magnificent ice-cold pilsner, bratwurst, chips and industrial mayonnaise is the order of the day. And you drink the beer from a glass. Not the plastic nonsense you get elsewhere. Standing next to a crowd of small, plump, elderly frauleins - drinking their pilsner in the sunshine - is a memory I’ll cherish for ever. As is the tennis. There are some serious players there. Roger Federer has won most of them and we saw him. Once you’ve seen Federer play on grass, well, there’s no-where to go but down really, although just thinking about it, I remain high in the clouds above. Adding to the amusement, there is actually a fashion show with a little catwalk too. I believe the man who created the event has something to do with that particular industry. Anyway, it’s all rather wunderbar.

And not to diss the modern world entirely, there may be no tennis currently playing - which is a wee shame, as a Scottish person once said - but it is possible to watch tennis of all types, from all eras, online, thanks to that world-wide web. I’ve always felt the Internet is great if you’re not insane, depressed or a moron. So go on, fill your boots. Tennis is the greatest. Whoever invented it must themselves have been a little insane. No normal person could create a game of such eccentric and random genius. 'Fifteen-Love'! If you say so. Incidentally, thirty years ago, Stefan Edberg won his second and last Wimbledon final, beating Boris Becker in a five-set epic. He reached his last grand slam final at twenty-seven years old. Quite a contrast from today's top players who have all won multiple slams in their thirties. Interesting. I'll need to ask them their secret.