Drinking up the tennis epic

Ireally can’t stand the idea of trying to tackle topical events this week. And this column isn’t long enough for me to run off at the mouth as I would wish about our current sorry political state. So, no doubt to your great and collective relief, I am going to give you my fourpence worth on another subject about which I know very little and in which I take little active part. Sport.

Now that the ‘summer of sport’ is over – at least, the summer of some forms of sport – I suppose there will be huge post-mortems all over the shop about how things were run, who was robbed, the ducking, diving and general controversy about interpretations of VAR and whether Wimbledon’s rules ought to be changed to stop epic matches that knock seven bells out of the players and leave the spectators feeling pretty washed out, too.

I didn’t watch much footie – having seen about 15 minutes of the Colombia-England wrestling contest, I found myself humming that wonderful Kirsty MacColl earworm ‘England Two, Colombia Nil’ for about a week afterwards. That was really the only lasting effect, apart from a glimpse of Croatia in full flight which left me with the almost irresistible impulse to pin down and force-feed Luca Modric three square meals a day until he stopped looking like a pair of cheekbones on stilts.

And rules? Pshaw to your paltry rules, I say. Or at least football’s governing body does, in failing to back up its front-line match officials by giving them the authority to deal with the increasingly unacceptable antics and can trips of overpaid young men with an inflated idea of their own importance.

Change is coming, I devoutly hope. And even the hallowed portals of the undoubtedly conservative and traditionalist All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club are being assailed by demands that the rules are altered so that last-set battles don’t become wars of attrition.

I’m old enough to remember the 1970s when such players as Charlie Pasarell and Pancho Gonzales stayed on court for so long that tie-breaks were invented. Then, their introduction was thought to be a terribly radical move but look how it improved and moved the game forward.

Now, those in the know are calling for further reform and are they right? Mats Wilander and John McEnroe say so, so there.

I just love the fact that that footstamping, racquet-hurling wee curlytop John McEnroe has become an elder statesman and national treasure here in Britain and that he now channels his inner brat into humorous yet wellinformed (one might even claim, serious) interventions from the commentary box. And I have to say that this year, after several men’s singles matches – I’m sorry, gentlemen’s singles matches – that went on longer than it takes to read (note, I don’t say understand) the Brexit legislation, I am right in his court when he says that there ought now to be a tie-break rule for the fifth set of a major, ongoing contest.

Who could have failed, at this Wimbledon, to feel sorry for John Isner and Kevin Anderson?

Up against the greats at all levels, pulling off amazing successes but ultimately stymied by the sheer exhaustion of their shared, 50-game final set. Isner, of course, was one of the two players (pub quiz question: Who was the other? Frenchman Nicolas Mahut) who ground out a final set of 70 games to 68 back in 2010. The fact that he’s back in the record books as a (losing) participant in the secondlongest match ever played at Wimbledon will be small comfort.

I am sure Kevin Anderson was nervous, overawed, anxious and maybe just plain not good enough to put up much of a show against Novak Djokovic on Sunday last.

The difference between excellence and genius is almost impossible to define, be it perspiration or inspiration or, as George Galloway attributed to Saddam Hussein, indefatigability. But I feel certain that a large part of poor Anderson’s problem was that he was knackered, pure and simple.

Of course, Djokovic also had a pretty fierce semi-final battle against the lovely Rafa Nadal (when will someone get that boy a comfortable pair of shorts that doesn’t require constant interference with his doonstairs dipartmint?) but it only went to 13-11 in the final set, not to a level resembling a darts score. And who was it, against the run of expectations, hype and build-up towards a Rafa/Federer final, who called it correctly on a Djokovich championship win? Sir Andrew of Murray, no less, distinguishing himself in his debut as a pundit.

And it’s so much less stressful for the viewer to have him in the commentary box rather than out there on Centre Court.

When it gets to 10-10 or even 12-12, bring in a shorter final set. If nothing else, it will do wonders for my liver. In my experience, surviving the spectacle of this kind of match, even without the presence of the mercurial Murray, is only possible when half-cut.

Give us all a (tie) break, for goodness’ sake.

It’s so much less stressful for the viewer to have him in the commentary box

Novak Djokovic kept us riveted to our TVs as he defeated all-comers to take the men’s singles trophy at Wimbledon.