On yer bike Keown, just have a stab at The Sun Also Rises . . .
The Diary went on a cultural quest at Wimbledon yesterday. Football pundit Martin Keown’s bizarre quippery during the England-sweden World Cup game – “There might be someone back home reading a book – they need to get a life” – required a response. The Diary hoped to find evidence that sport and the various art forms can happily co-exist and wasn’t disappointed. Ernests Gulbis is often described as “Latvia’s tennis playboy”, which you might imagine to be a field of one. His father is an investment banker and Gulbis has said he doesn’t play for money. Daddy’s
private jet has occasionally been available to him after tournaments – handy for when you don’t want to hang around in Rome, eternal city maybe, and there’s a fabulous party happening back in Riga. But the old man is a book-lover and named his laddie after Ernest Hemingway, pictured. The giant of American letters liked tennis and played with fellow writer Harold Loeb. Paris was the venue for these matches, next to the city’s guillotine, which is the sort of incidental colour a wordsmith craves.
Hemingway put tennis – and playboys – into his classic The Sun Also Rises but maybe the best things about the sport for him were the ball cans. He used them to make dense tubes of ice for his martinis. The Diary was sorry to see Gulbis exit the tournament. Besides his strokeplay, he’s often quirky with the post-match quotes. When he was arrested for allegedly trying to solicit a prostitute in Sweden he claimed the incident had been a “misunderstanding”, but added: “I think everyone should spend one
night in prison.” Hemingway would undoubtedly have agreed.
With his thumping great serve you might wonder if Canada’s Milos Raonic breenges through life, missing its subtle hues. Not a bit. After his fourth-round victory and the tennis questions had been got out of the way, he offered his critique on London’s art scene: “I thought All Too Human at Tate Britain was great,” he said. And which painter would he have craft his portrait? Unabashed, he said: “You’ve got to go back to Da Vinci
and Michelangelo.” Still pining for another Wimbledon casualty, Garbine Muguruza, the Diary was cheered by the tweet of her relaxing back at home with her guitar. Okay, so maybe the rendition of Bob Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door wasn’t much of an improvement on her tennis – last year’s champ couldn’t hit a barn door with that fluffy forehand this time – the Diary would like to see Martin Keown strike up a tune. Goran Ivanisevic has the job of switching Raonic’s mind back on to tennis – the Croatian champion of 2001 is
his coach. Ivanisevic will have his distractions today when his country play England for a place in the World Cup final and tried to temper what he feels is premature exultation. When an English questioner asked how he thought the game would go he said: “You already won, you’re bringing the trophy – you’re so arrogant. For sure you are coming home, but I hope not with the cup.” The bold Ivan wants his man to play first in today’s quarter-finals so he can be “in the pub with the English people and hopefully I’m going to be the last one laughing.”