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player ready...A kinder, gentler Wimbledon arrives this year, a little later in the calendar and with a little less air in the tennis ball. Otherwise, everything seems pretty much as the world left it, stuffy, pretentious and in various shades of green.
There is a new show court being built and the debris of construction adds the litter of progress to the old place. This is something the All-England Club has not always hugged with both gloved hands, progress, not litter, which is not so much forbidden here as inadmissible, like a Fleet Street tabloid in the member’s enclosure.
The announcement of a new Court 1 and other improvements to be in place within the next few years will, the club insists, take Wimbledon “into the 21st Century.”
This is a surprising contention since, as far as anyone can tell, it has managed to avoid, entirely, the 20th.
But the great charm of Wimbledon is that it is a relic, leaning on tradition and convention like twin umbrellas. Arthur Ashe once summed up the place thusly: “Wimbledon is a bona fide, certified British tradition. And British traditions are just a bit more traditional than anyone else’s.”
Or, in the words of house pet Andre Agassi, “Wimbledon is separate; it is especially special.”
How such a contradictory grungeball as Agassi became the darling of the place is not quite clear, but Agassi does have the joint charmed, so much so that they ought to just call it “My Fortnight with Andre.”
They have seeded Agassi No. 1 over Pete Sampras, who has won the men’s singles title twice in a row, whose game of speed and power is made for Wimbledon and despite Sampras being the No. 1 player in the world.
In the debate over who is best–Agassi or Sampras–stuffy old Wimbledon has come down on the side of the little baseliner with the ‘do-rag and the pierced body parts.
As strange might be a linesman wearing a Grateful Dead necktie, though, to be honest, I did see just that Tuesday on Court 2.
In winning his opening match over the teenage Tasmanian, Andrew Painter, Agassi’s game was not as inspiring as his choice of covering for his increasingly hairfree head. He wore the kind of kerchief banned by no less than the National Football League.
Though it was predominately white, it made Agassi look like he had shown up to fix the plaster. The point is, who would have believed the NFL would be less tolerant than a place that saves a seat for whatever royalty happens to wander by and serves crustless cucumber sandwiches at tea time, no matter whether it is match point or mixed doubles.
But more than being allowed to look goofy, Agassi has been indulged by a change in the tennis balls, less pressurized than normal, which is supposed to allow for longer rallies, to keep baseliners in points beyond the serve and/or the return.
In last year’s final between Sampras and Goren Ivanisevic, only one rally lasted more than eight strokes. Criticism of tennis as a game of bash and bore is always greater here because it is on the fastest surface and it is the most important tournament in the world.
So, instead of softening the surface, making Wimbledon like every other tournament, the club softened the ball and will reduce a 120 m.p.h. serve to 113 m.p.h., so they say, not that anyone in the Royal Box will notice or even remain consistently awake.
In spite of a week later start, for Wimbledon this year, British farmers managed to bring their strawberry fields to harvest at just the proper time for the little red beauties to be dampened by Devonshire Cream at the going rate of roughly 28 cents a strawberry.
This is an increase of several cents over last year, and has brought the annual protest of price gouging from strawberry activists. But a spokescreature for the club, Sue Youngman, points out that this is less per berry than at two of the other fixtures of the British summer, the Chelsea Flower Show and Royal Ascot.
“People would complain if we just gave them away,” she said.
Sounds like a dare to me.
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