I first watched Wimbledon when I was a child. It was the path of least resistance, as two weeks a year my mother was glued to the (black and white) television screen. Over time, I learnt the rules, the names of the players and what their strengths and weaknesses were. I also tried to learn to play tennis, but as I have no hand-eye coordination, it was a lost cause. I couldn’t master most of the strokes, and when I played a match with a schoolfriend I lost 6-0 6-1. The one game I won was because her concentration wavered for a few minutes. Even if you know nothing about tennis, you can tell that’s not a good score.
At that time, I had no idea there were other tournaments apart from Wimbledon. The commentators would talk about the Australian, French and the US opens, but as they weren’t televised in the UK, they barely registered in my consciousness. As far as I was concerned, they were lesser tournaments and if someone I was watching had won one of these, I would think ‘so what.’
But I was still a loyal Wimbledon watcher and my tennis knowledge slowly expanded. I remember rushing home from work to plonk myself in front of a final, during which nobody was allowed to talk to me.
Cut to the modern age. I was still an avid Wimbledon watcher, but with the advent of Sky, I found out that not only were there Australian, French and US opens, but there were tournaments all the year round! It was like walking into a huge toy store filled with the newest and most exciting toys. And importantly, all my favourite players played in them.
That heralded visits to the biggest tournaments: the US open, where we had seats at the back of an enormous stadium, but got see some of the biggest tennis stars in action, even if they looked like ants; the French open, where it rained non-stop and we saw only 18 minutes of play; and Wimbledon three times, once to a final.
But I also started going to the more accessible and (slightly) more affordable tournaments. Queens in West London (twice), Monte Carlo (twice), Madrid (twice) and Rome. Like all live sporting events, once you’ve been in person, you have a different perspective on what you see on television.
By now, I was an old hand. I knew about rankings, how many points each tournaments on the circuit offered, who was up and coming, who was down and going, which surfaces tournaments were played on. I learnt there was a clay court season, a grass court season and a hard court season. An all-round player was good on all surfaces. Other players played best on grass and some were kings and queens of clay.
And with every match I watched, I learnt more about dropshots, slices, volleys, spin, and lobs. Trust me, tennis is not just two (or four for doubles) people hitting a ball to and fro over a net. It requires strength, stamina, speed and quick thinking. Whenever I walk past the local free tennis courts, I find myself thinking ‘you should have gone cross court’ or ‘that ball toss wasn’t high enough.’ Yes, I have become that awful creature, an armchair commentator.
I still get great pleasure from watching tennis. I just wish I had the ability to pick up a racket and slam an ace down the line at 230 km/h (143 mph), but I find it hard to get my fork to my mouth without half the food falling off. Still, at least I know how to say ‘game, set and match’ in several European languages.
Maybe I could become a referee.
Thank you for this! I know next to nothing about tennis, except that one must be a kind of super-athlete in order to be any good at it, and that there is a game called “Questions” which is based on tennis to some degree, in which to hit the ball is to answer each question with another question, as quickly and wittily as possible: the point is to get your opponent to falter by answering with a statement. (I believe the scoring is based on the tennis format also.) I loved this post: murder is wrong, kill them with tennis instead! (And slaying through tennis is more graceful and elegant than actual murder, more often than not, or so I understand. Is there such a thing as suicide by tennis?)