John McEnroe plus Anyone

Letters

Vol. 21 No. 14 · 15 July 1999

From Keith Flett

Edward Said is sure that tennis is in decline (LRB, 1 July) but I cannot agree that – in Britain at least – commercialism is ruining the sport. The obnoxious and sexist Tim Henman reminds us that whatever the problems with footballers or cricketers, people without a well-to-do background can get to the top in these sports. Commercialism has ended the amateur attitudes which pervaded most British sports. Tennis, and to an extent golf, remain exceptions.

Keith Flett
London N17

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Vol. 21 No. 15 · 29 July 1999

From John Bale

In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said barely mentions sport. In his review of a book on sport (LRB, 1 July) he barely mentions imperialism. Not much chance, then, of him becoming the C.L.R. James of tennis.

John Bale
Keele University

From Bruce Clunies Ross

I have been an uncomplaining reader of the LRB since its kangaroo-pouch beginnings and cannot recall ever seeing an essay on literature by Rod Laver, though presumably he knows how to read and write. Edward Said's parade of Names of Tennis Players I Remember and Caryl Phillips Forgot (if he ever knew them), right down to Don Candy, who enjoyed a reputation in the beer garden of Candy's Wellington Square Hotel and even before that among the wits of Colonel Light Gardens where we grew up, as a kind of prototype Sheridan Bucket of lawn tennis, is a donkey-drop game. The professor may be forgiven mis-hits like the omission of Ken McGregor (Candy's South Australian contemporary and superior) but not his failure to mention the greatest unorthodox individualist in the game during the period spanned by his unreliable memoir. Pancho Segura, if not the inventor of the double-handed forehand, was certainly its most dangerous exponent. Omitting to mention him is the equivalent of writing about literature and imperialism without noticing Conrad. Segura was the great eccentric stylist of tennis, not just for his unorthodox forehand but also for his feline anticipation, belied by a pigeon-toed shuffle around the court, and a preternatural reaction speed which enabled him to take an opponent's smash on the volley and return it double-handed like a shot off a shovel. He was, admittedly, an early member of the professional circus when that is exactly what it was, but his performance on the court was an inspiring counter-example to the orthodoxies of Jack Kramer, who rigidly believed there was only one way – his – to hold a racquet.

Bruce Clunies Ross
Jystrup, Denmark

From Sean Callow

Edward Said claims to have been involved with tennis for well over fifty years. Perhaps he has been brained at the net a few too many times, otherwise he would not have made the unforgivable mistake of not knowing the four Grand Slam venues. Having attended nine of the past ten Australian Opens, I can vouch for the fact that the event is held in Melbourne.

Sean Callow
London SW9

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Vol. 21 No. 16 · 19 August 1999

From Don Coles

Edward Said (LRB, 1 July) is entirely justified in complaining about the unbridgeable gulf that now exists between even a decent amateur player and a professional, a gulf which, although it certainly existed back in faux-amateur days, could at least be stared across and once in a while, for a couple of hours, jumped over. In some inexact year of the early Twenties, before my time though not much before, the British Davis Cup team was barnstorming in Ontario and stopped for a match in Woodstock, where one of its players fell ill and a call went out for any local who might replace him in one of the two singles matches. My father, a fine athlete and pretty good tennis player, not long back from the war, was nominated. He knew he was outgunned and decided – what the heck – to hit every ball as hard as he could and to go for every line. He won the match. Of course the two teams were not the world's best; of course it was not a famous stage, but still: nobody in the same position would today ever come close to Henman, to Rusedski, or to tour players a thousand places below those two.

Don Coles
Toronto

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Vol. 21 No. 17 · 2 September 1999

From William Scammell

I'm not so sure about the 'unbridgeable gulf' between amateur and professional tennis players proposed by Edward Said and endorsed by Don Coles (Letters, 19 August). The amateur game has improved by leaps and bounds, just as the professional one has. Walk around any tennis complex and watch the teens and twenties blasting hell out of the ball, hitting lines and corners, volleying brilliantly, returning the unreturnable. The best of them would give any middle-order pro a good game. Beamed back into the past, I suspect that the ferocity of their strokes would astound anyone between Tilden and Santana – though it's always tricky putting one era up against another. All they lack is consistency and the desire to empty their lives of everything but tennis. The great consolation for amateurs, if consolation is needed, is that their game breeds enjoyment as naturally as it breeds curses and errors. (I await the space-age racquet that can be hurled at walls while retaining all its magic properties.) What we live for is the once-in-a-season moment of perfection, the topspin backhand that comes off, the perfect lob-volley, the forehand down the line. What professionals live for is points, money, sponsors, sore shoulders, thrashed tendons, glamorous girlfriends and the sickness unto early retirement, from which many of them never recover.

William Scammell
Aspatria, Cumbria

From Jeremy Bernstein

Edward Said's mention of Budge Patty dates both him and me. I met Patty in the winter of 1960 when we were both members of the Tennis Club of Paris. My one lasting memory of him was when he lost to the Dane Kurt Nielsen in that winter's indoor championships, which were played at our club. He came to our contiguous lockers and said: 'I hate it! I hate it!' I suppose he meant that he hated to lose.

Jeremy Bernstein
New York

From John Clayton

Has anyone else noticed that most good tennis players (professional and weekend) are pigeon-toed?

John Clayton
Bangkok