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| Once, in one of those moments when you wish the earth would open and swallow you whole, I had every eye in Wimbledon's Centre Court turned upon me in savage indignation. I wasn't down there on the immaculate grass querying a call. I was a spectator... I had better explain.
In the early ‘50’s and my early teens I lived close to Wimbledon. It was easy to jump on a bicycle, join the line and, paying at the gate, grab a standing place in the bleachers for an entire day’s play. All you needed besides the resilience of youth was a good alarm clock and a better bladder. Those days were different. It is a fact that is in danger of slipping through the social historians’ nets that in the ‘50’s there was a good deal of distinct, if superficial, anti-American feeling in Great Britain. Long range trigger for this was the sense of ‘poor relation’ status left over from World War II and exemplified in the crack that there had been just three things wrong with G.I. Joe – he was “over-paid, over-sexed and over here”. Hollywood movies in which Humphrey Bogart single handedly won the battle of El Alamein scarcely assuaged this prejudice. But what kept refreshing it – the short term trigger – was sport. The administrators’ ancient cry that sport is an international language bringing peoples together across frontiers has always been so m In post-war Britain boxing was the worst example. Urged on by greedy promoters (right, nothing changes) a long parade of British fighters were overmatched against American opponents to end up horizontal. The Brits lacked red-blooded protein and, far more tellingly, serious ring experience. There was no Golden Gloves proving ground here. Few went the distance. The British fan ground his teeth and cursed all things American in the spirit of ‘Damn Yankees’. The real Back to the 1954 Centre Court. Britain, as ever, had no home grown contender for top tennis honors. The next best thing was to root for an Aussie. In this period the Aussies and Yanks divided the tennis world: only, come 1954, American men had won five out of the last six Wimbledon singles titles and every Women’s. It was getting to be too much of a bad thing. Perversely, nutty over American movies, I used to root for the Yanks. So, when there I stood in the baking sun watching Tony Trabert play Sven Davidson I was pretty much in a minority of one. It was a tight encounter. Trabert, fresh out the service, was less than totally match fit. Davidson, the Swedish Number One (and later to win a major) was a quality opponent. Four gutsy, less than technically brilliant sets were split 2-2. 3 games all in the fifth. 15 all in the vital seventh. Davidson serving…serving a double. Breaking a silence in which you could have heard the pin drop I heard someone clapping. It was me. I had clapped because, willing Trabert to win these past three hours I had wound totally myself into the contest and knew – as one does when young – that this had been the pivotal point of the pivotal game. All the same, my reaction was still unpardonable. So thought Davidson. He looked at me less in outrage than contempt. Trabert was as unforgiving. So was the entire universe. Part of the thick cat’s cradle of emotion was that both players knew exactly why I had reacted so and a lot of the crowd didn’t. For the spectators my bad manners were made all the more outrageous by the revelation that, obviously not an American, I was supporting one. Effectively. Somehow time resumes. The game and my life went on. Trabert won the next point, the game, the match. He fell in a later round. The next year, properly fit, he took the title without dropping a set – an achievement that makes him possibly the most under-rated champion in the tournament’s history. Today, both for better and worse, things have changed. Tennis can lay fair claim to being the most international of games. On the circuit Belorussians play Peruvians, Thais play Slovenes, as a matter of routine. No nation that much dominates and players are generally judged by how they play and behave rather than by the color of their passport. Stan Smith had sleepy-eyed class. Sore loser McEnroe didn’t. Tod Martin is the college try on legs. The Williams sisters are artifacts. As individuals, players are accepted or rejected for what they are. The down side. Today my stuttering handclap would go for nothing. Today’s tennis brats are the fans. Their allegiance may now be to a person but their manners are appalling. Nobody receiving from Agassi can be sure that even as the service toss floats skywards a cry of “Go, Andre!” won’t shatter the silence and his concentration. If a double fault is delivered today, an unforced error perpetrated, Flushing Meadow, Roland Garros, resounds to rebel yells and catcalls. Mary Pierce’s victory this year in Paris (what a pity Joan Crawford isn’t still around to play her in the movie) was as gross an instance of sustained audio hooliganism as I have heard outside of a soccer stadium. That obviously comes back to nationalism – hometown support for a local heroine. Likewise the Davis Cup still brings out the worst in the Patrick Henry (“my country’s point, in or out”) fans. All the same I prefer to remain a guarded optimist. Another Wimbledon, the most internationally open for years, (Men’s and Women’s alike) is upon us. It will once again be extravagant hats, strawberries and cream, some fabulous thrills and spills tennis and the clutch of corporate hospitalees who don’t know one end of a racket from the other. The sun will shine, the rain will rain, and, by and large, no Brit lasting the course, the players will be judged on immediate, on-court merit. At the unpretentious suburban London tennis club where I weekly make a different kind of fool of myself the nationalities among the two hundred or so members stretches into the twenties. Any evening’s social play will involve the odd Russian…Czech…French…Italian…Japanese….American. When a bunch of us watch a Wimbledon match on TV in the club bar, then, man and woman, we’ll applaud both players for fine shots and rather see a personal favorite lose in a quality thriller than win in a one-sided rout. Mind you, I’m still not without a touch of prejudice. These days I do tend to root for Swedes. This is an inadequate way, I guess, of apologizing to Sven Davidson for helping to cost him that match forty-six years ago. As for you, gentle reader, what will you be looking for when the USA meets Cuba in the Sydney Olympics baseball final? A hometown win at any price or a great, great game. Sport the uniter of peoples across frontiers…? Mmmn…I’d have to say the jury is still out on that one.
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uch hogwash. More often than not sport is the most chauvinistically divisive game in town.
end of WW II in the U.K. is arguably not from the end of rationing but from the night Randolph Turpin clearly out-pointed the great Sugar Ray Robinson.
