You cannot, as a famous tennis player once insisted, be serious.
Word arrives that tennis is in turmoil, when the dateline insists tennis is in Australia, not that the two are incompatible. Anyone who ever has been served Vegemite on brown bread knows that anything is possible down there.
Tennis is not on the minds of Americans much these days, save for Serena Williams popping up from time to time to remind us that we, too, once played the game.
Otherwise tennis has been left in the care of vowel-challenged refugees who fill out a draw sheet like it was an eye chart. So whatever they are up to is up to them, and some of them apparently have been naughty.
While we have been preoccupied with our own mischief makers, the Lance Armstrongs and the Barry Bondses, with Deflategate and assorted NFL mug shots, international tennis has turned into wrestling. And you can bet on it.
Things apparently have gotten so bad that the game has decided to look into the integrity of its own Tennis Integrity Unit, the very existence of which signifies something may be rotten in Denmark, or Toowoomba or Marrakech, any of those outposts where they play tennis when the rest of us are not paying attention.
Bettors apparently do keep up and wager more money on the little country club game than on many sports where people bleed and grunt. Not that tennis players don’t grunt. Lord knows they sound like an ordinary barnyard, if said barnyard was miked with speakers.
The point is turmoil is not compatible with tennis’ traditionally muted condition. The game may be marked by groans and grunts, but it is best appreciated by polite applause and sentiments such as “My word” and “Well done.”
It is a game where — at Wimbledon, at least — the players are identified as ladies and gentlemen. Says so right there on the draw sheet as well as above the changing rooms.
The sporting gesture of the postmatch handshake encourages us to consider that all is proper and polite with nothing amiss or dishonest. Possibly a little stink eye would be more honest.
Still, tennis does not seem to be the place to look for larceny and deceit. Even the disputed line call is now reviewed by technology, a loss to those of us who enjoyed hearing John McEnroe call an official “the pits of the world.”
To learn then that players apparently have been throwing matches as if they were paper cups may not meet the strict definition of “turmoil,” but when you toss in the notion that it has happened on the sacred sod of Wimbledon, well, the tennis world could not be more distressed if it learned at the same time that Andre Agassi did not wear underwear when he played.
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Of the two recent bit of news from tennis, the Agassi revelation grips the imagination more than the accusation that a mixed doubles match in Melbourne was highly suspicious.
Actually, the Commando Agassi news is old, having been revealed in his autobiography seven years ago, along with a smug boast on how easy it is to tank a tennis match and a confession that he had done just that in Australia so he would not have to play Boris Becker in the next round.
The longstanding suspicion that the most celebrated tennis match ever played, the one between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, was thrown by Riggs lives on long after Riggs.
So, then, none of this is really new, going back to the days when amateurs accepted “appearance fees” instead of prize money, when pros decided beforehand how to divvy up the meager prize money, no matter which of them won.
There are more than 2,000 ranked pro male tennis players in the world and another 1,300 ranked pro female players. Maybe 300 make enough money to sustain themselves, while the rest are easy pickings for bribers and crooks.
So how then to end this turmoil and protect the integrity of tennis? Simple, really. Make sure the players put their underwear on one leg at a time.
Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the baiduhai.