Monday 15 July 2013

Deck the Halls

'Twas a stroke of genius to see blades of grass and decide to make a racquet sport on it. Somebody went 'twack', and then got a 'thwoop' back (that is somewhere between actual racquet-ball contact noises, and the thing that video games in the '90's passed for a forehand). And then everyone applaud the guy with the hardest 'thwoop' (the innuendo's all in your head) or the quirkiest 'thwunk' and Wimbledon was born. That and vaguely high levels of posh-ness in South West London, garnished with a neglect for croquet (even AELTC has dropped croquet from its intials, so it has about as much of a point as a deranged right wing news anchor).

Alas, it all boiled to nothing, for when you add British expectation to  British tennis, it just means a waste of newspaper space in the Daily Mail that should go to immigrant bashing or house price furores. Its a perfect formula of lets take a system that produces one guy who knows which side of a racquet to hold and weigh him down with history and the absence of glory. And imagine how hard it is when the guy is Tim Henman, who injured a ball girl for beating him in straight sets (that might just as well have been the cause).

So right, back to the point (or lack thereof). This Wimbledon hoorah has to stop. One must realise that there is no lesser or greater feat that Murray achieved this year than what Djokovic, Federer and Nadal have done in the past. Quite simply, its another match well won, and thats about it. So while he did have the hopes of a nation and had more mental preparedness than Novak who only wanted to mock Maria Sharapova and other Russian who wouldn't Djok him (and thats how we make bad Serbian puns), he did essentially no more or less than win 7 matches, and a total of 21 sets, or as FedEx calls it, streak against Hewitt.

This Wimbledon should be remembered for its plethora of giant killing. Darcis beat Nadal, Stakhovsky-Fed and Lisicki beat one of the Williams brothers. I did wait till all the celebration simmered down so that this didnt look like an antagonistic hipster piece, but now it just looks like a pointless wallow. Or as Tim Henman called it, the first. set.  

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