"Hey! NOBODY tosses a dwarf!"
Posted on 06/22/2003 4:58:14 PM PDT by Tomalak
So here it is; the fortnight from hell. If the weather’s halfway decent, we’re stuck with wall-to-wall coverage of the most boring game ever invented, played by the most boring athletes, watched by the most boring audience, interpreted by the most boring commentators.
And that’s when it’s at its best. It’s even worse if it rains. I have only two words for you: Sir Cliff.
There are few more depressing representations of modern Britain than Wimbledon fortnight. A soporific sport watched only by catatonically dull suburbanites, who think they are getting down and dirty when they squeak “come on, Tim” when their hero chokes on yet another critical point, tennis could have no more apposite home than Wimbledon.
It is, after all, the ultimate suburban sport. Everything about it apes the suburbs. Second after minute after hour of buttock-clenching numbness with nothing happening except the occasional grunt, frowned upon by everyone within earshot. Strict codes of what is and isn’t acceptable to wear — and that just for the spectators. Blazered administrators with monikers such as “Bunny” and “The Major”. Players who have to sit down for a tea break every ten minutes. And the most exciting, mysterious aspect of the sport is the scoring system.
The long rows and rectangles of tennis courts are even designed like suburban housing, with suburban rules — if you go outside your designated area you will suffer the consequences. Is it any wonder that tennis attracts such square, suburban types, when its very basis is squares and rules about what can and can’t go into which one?
Then there are the players.
Tim. I mean, Tim. Has there ever been a more appropriate name for a tennis player than Tim. Try yelling a full-throated “come on, Tim”. See what I mean? It’s not possible. You have to squeak it in a shrill whine, which says all that you need to know about the man himself. For four years he has got into the semi-finals, an oh-so-typically British performance: far enough not to be humiliating to his fans but, in the end, completely useless. To winners, the only thing which counts is, well, winning. Not coming fourth.
And Mr Henman ain’t no winner. Put him under real pressure — not the faux pressure of winning a third-round match against an Ecuadorean with a broken leg and his hands tied behind his back, where he manages a plucky win after trailing 2-5 in the final set — and he chokes. Put him in a match where he might get into the final, and it’s a giant waste of everyone's time.
We all know what will happen this time. Exactly the same thing — if he even gets as far as the semis. It’ll be Henmania until, ho hum, he gets bundled out. And that’ll be that until next year, when it repeats all over again. You might say the spectators never learn, having been through the same script four times already. But that’s to miss the point. Of course they never learn, and of course the same thing will happen this year. That’s because tennis is the sport for people who don’t really like sport, and Tim Henman is the icon for supporters who don’t really like to support, but who think they do.
A genuine spectator sport arouses passion — a word which jars with the mention of tennis. Not the uptight, “can you pass the cucumber sandwiches? Oh, all right, then just one more strawberry” passion which the spectators in London SW19 think they are feeling, or the “heh, let’s hang loose and be really uninhibited by watching the match on Henman Hill” passion of the rest, who worry that they might turn into tennis hooligans if they drink all of that can of shandy.
I can’t help the fact that I support Spurs. I can’t do anything about the fact that at the end of every season I say I’m not going to renew my £750-a-year season ticket because the team is crap and we are going nowhere, and yet every year I nonetheless write out that wretched cheque. I don’t decide that it might be fun to go to a match. I have no choice but to go. It’s in my blood.
What else but a player who cracks under pressure can one expect from a sport which goes out of its way to be as exclusive as possible; whose players’ backgrounds mean they have never come across the concept of hunger for success; which draws its recruits only from people whose want-for-nothing upbringing would have led them, if they had the brains to do so, to take advantage of their opportunities and go into a professional job, but who are indeed intellectually challenged and so become tennis players; which excludes recruits from families which aren’t “our sort of people”; and which is run by an organisation which is called, in a glorious example of newspeak, the All England Club?
Stephen Pollard is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe
Next, the author claims Wimbledon is a representation of modern Britain proving he's ingnorant as well as stupid, I mean how many decades of history does Wimbledon have, how many centuries does tennis itself have?
Next he claims tennis isn't a sport. Huh? Next it is a sport but it's boring. Is that silly view appropriate for news articles? The whole article reeks of a hidden agenda: sports played by the well-to-do and suburbanites are evil, the suburbanites themselves are evil and the suburbs are evil. Clearly, a dangerous article written with a rather obvious fascist political agenda.
I guess the description of it being "suburban" should have made me realize I was mistaken
"Hey! NOBODY tosses a dwarf!"
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