Two Chaps Talking

Old Chap,

So once again, the first frosts of autumn dust the playing fields and a chap knows it’s time to put away the racket and dubbin his rugger boots. Well obviously, in my case, there aren’t actually any rugger boots, I mean, how bloody daft do you think I am? I played rugger once at school (and by that I don’t mean I once played rugger, I mean I played just the one game). I stood terrified in the middle of a sea of frozen mud with divots and furrows like concrete knives and inadvertently caught the ball. When I noticed the opposing front row bearing down on me I, unsurprisingly, ran. I would have kept going all the way to the warm safety of the pavilion but tripped as I crossed the line and scored my one and only brilliant try while breaking jaw, wrist and spirit. They carried me off the pitch that day shoulder high. Unfortunately it was on a gurney.

Tennis, on the other hand, is decidedly my sort of game. I know what you’re thinking. There he goes again, dreaming of limp locked Ganymedes in unbesmirched whites, building up a fetching glow on the lawns before a hot bath, a brisk rubdown and eight hours of uninterrupted buggery in his rooms but no, I mean actually playing it.

It was the Memsahib who put me up to it. I think she felt I needed some physical counterpoint to the otherwise rigorous life of the mind I have chosen. She opined that the spiritual quality of my existence perhaps lacked the more temporal anchor of a robust earthly frame. She also called me ‘fat-knacker’.

I remonstrated, as you may well imagine. I averred that I was in excellent shape. She responded that I was, indeed, an excellent shape for a large egg and, furthermore, that she considered normal conjugal relations to be not only aesthetically unpleasant but, increasingly, physically impossible.

In short, I needed to lose a few pounds.

I equipped myself, in short order, with an expensive racket, a can of balls and some ludicrous shoes of such glaring whiteness that I went temporarily snowblind until I’d fallen over in them a few times. I summoned the finest Professional to be had at the Regent’s Park Tennis Club and took lessons.

Within a very short time I was adept at forehand, backhand, volley and service. I could drop the ball into the required box with reasonably repeatable accuracy and I felt ready to humble the Mem in a game.

I limbered up with the prescribed stretching exercises, jogged up and down a bit, pensively twanged my racket strings and speculatively tested the bounce of the ball. The Mem strolled onto the court looking like a very high spec Joan Hunter-Dunn and assumed a relaxed pose of politely feverless anticipation.

Now was my moment. I cast the ball perfectly, coiled the muscular powerhouse of my spine into an impossible backward curve, sent the racket through a perfect arc and, at it’s precise apogee connected with the descending ball, my entire strength behind it. I grunted as the shot fired through the box and past the Mem in a perfect ace.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Dear God. There’s no need to play like an American”.

With which she lobbed the ball up, as if she were testing the wind with thistledown and, without appearing to move at all drove the ball back past me. At least I think she did. There was no actual trace of the ball. There was an eighteen inch melted scar in the playing surface somewhere just inside the box, a smoking hole in the chainlink fence, cut edges still glowing red and a light cloud of neon green fur.

I decided it was time for a strategic regroup over a lemon barley water.

This is what I learned. You can forget lawns, clay courts, real and indoor tennis, the only real game is Middle Class or ‘Sorry’ tennis. What follows is a necessarily brief rundown of the rules. As with any sport played to a high enough level, it can take a lifetime to get it right

First of all, the location. It is imperative that the playing surface is a shite tarmac, just like the player will have learned on in their school, regiment, university or suburban garden. (The finest MC courts in the world are to be found in Regent’s park). It is essential that they should be fully open to the public so there is always someone worse than you to tut at. Private tennis clubs are for strivers, climbers, arrivistes and foreigners.

Your racket should always be last year’s top model. This implies the perfect combination of thrift, carelessness but frightening ability. Most serious players have already bought next year’s racket and will spend the off-season soaking the handle in tea to make it look suitably used. Balls should be marked in felt pen with a secret code mark (almost always, for some reason, three dots, like a Chicano prison tattoo) as MC tennis players who wouldn’t consider for a second breaking the law in any other way are happy to steal each other’s balls with the brazen glee of council estate twoccers.

Whites are absolutely forbidden. Anyone who arrives on a MC court wearing whites would be ‘trying too hard’, a capital crime in the UK, and is almost certainly some kind of Eurotrash banker. They may be adept at the regular game, possibly to near International standard, but no one will play with them. The true MC player spends years getting the look right, striving for the perfect combination of ‘fuck you’ nonchalance with display of the maximum number of class signifiers. The idea is that you’ve just tumbled out of bed in your stately home and have fallen into your most relaxed weekend gear for a knock-up on your private court.

Tennis shirts are for football hooligans not players. A gardening shirt will suffice.

Shorts are never white. They should be blue, school or regimental issue and at look like you wore them at eighteen. Note how this simultaneously implies that a) you don’t care for appearances, b) you went to the kind of school that had uniforms and played tennis and c) your arse is the same size it was at 18. Selfridge’s tennis department sells pre-aged shorts of this kind in sizes up to XXXL.

Ideally one should play in original Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes, ancient but lovingly Blancoed. Sadly this is likely to result in ankle and cartilage damage so many players have regretfully shifted to modern shoes. It is hoped that, with the increasing fashion for ‘Retro’ sportswear, Nike will bring out a ‘Venus Williams, Extra-Fast, Serve Like a Bastard and Turn on a Dime, Kevlar and Neoprene, Mid-Arch-Support, Anti-Pronation, Lo-Skid Jet Dap’ that looks just like a Blancoed Green Flash.

Other recommended accessories are rugger socks from one of the better Eton houses, knackered rowing jersey, T-shirt from bar in Barbados and a straw panama. Things to avoid are dresses, skirts, sweatbands, visors, caps, bobble backed socks, logoed tennis shirts, racket bags, sports drinks, power bars, wrist exercisers, elastic bandages, hi-tech elbow or knee braces, towels and bananas.

It is rumoured that a Swiss gentleman once walked onto a Surrey court with a light coloured cashmere sweater casually thrown around his shoulders. They found his body hanging from the swings in the children’s playground, an old ball jammed in his mouth and beaten black and blue with rackets. They flew him back to Zurich in restraints and under heavy sedation.

Finally to the game itself. There is no scoring system as it is considered impolite to actually win. Players knock the ball backwards and forwards in a way that gives the opponent the maximum chance to return. The important underlying idea is that, as two equally charming people, you play evenly until one of you inadvertently makes an error and allows a point. This way, points occur by accident rather than by one player trying harder than the other. A surprisingly Catholic system really. Scoring by omission rather than commission. It’s also much more polite and, as no one would dream of keeping score anyway, highly equitable. Difficult line or net calls are settled by both players hotly insisting that the other was in the right until one gives in, exhausted. Most importantly shots that are too good or too bad should be accompanied by the cry of ‘Sorry’. This should be called in a Home Counties accent with the emphasis on the long, flattened last syllable, thus….

“Sorrrr- ehhhhhhhhhhhh”.

If in doubt whether a shot is good or bad, it’s always worth saying it anyway. You should also apologise for the court, balls, weather and dragging your opponent away from something far more interesting. Above all never be the one that breaks the rally.

The point of all the gamesmanship in clothing and kit is to imply that you are brilliant but far too much of a gentleman to show it. Some of the best MC tennis players look so good at the game that they’ve never actually needed to play it. At whatever level it’s played, the game is won or lost before anyone walks onto the court

Which is why Americans always lose. Sure, they’ve won Wimbledon pretty consistently for years now but, where it really counts, in the home of the game, on municipal courts all over England, they are dressing perfectly, equipping themselves well, limbering up and grunting their way to total failure.

They may ‘win’, but they’ll never win.

T