You’ll always be a Grunt without a grunt
My childhood summers in the late 1950s involved a lot of walking in and out of the house during late June. Breaking off now and then from kicking a footie ball against the garage door, I’d go into our dining room to catch up on how
Mum would be glued to the 12” Bush mono picture, ironing as she peered through the transmission lines on-screen in order to follow the fate of her favourite stars: Little Mo, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, and Maria Bueno. It didn’t escape my notice that none of these gladiators were British, but some of them seemed that way and so Mum liked them. She especially liked the Aussie Ken Rosewall because he’d get two sets up and then cock it up, which was very British indeed. He never won the title, and was therefore clutched tight to her Underdog heart forever. The British love nothing more than tragic failure: for us, dignity in defeat is worth a thousand gold medals.
“What’s the score?” I’d ask.
“Forty-fifteen” Mum would reply, “Two set points”
She might as well have answered ‘seven to four the field’, because I didn’t understand tennis scoring. It involved juices and aces and advantages and games and sets and matches – almost as if there were three sports going on at once. The trailing through mysteriously non-metric (nay sir, not even binary) scoring based on units of fifteen was (and still is) bizarre, but this too was quintessentially British, like sixteen ounces in a pound and twelve pence in a shilling. Indeed, it often seemed to me that most fifteenth century English mathematicians might well have been Masons - designing houses and measuring stones, but del
There weren’t any good English tennis players in 1955. I say English because we sort of assumed that north of the Border they tossed cabers and ate high tea instead. We had Stanley Matthews in soccer, and Roger Bannister was good at running miles. Peter May was the ultimate matinee idol cricketer, taking on the mantle of Brylcreem Boy from Denis Compton. But it was so long since we’d had anyone good at tennis, the last bloke’s name had been Bunny. I mean, c’mon – Bunny? That’s worse than Algernon.
Then suddenly in 1957, a young lady called Christine Truman arrived at Wimbledon for the second time and, aged eighteen, got to the semi-finals. Of course, she lost. From then on, my sporadic visits indoors for a chocolate biscuit and the latest score became ever more predictable. Miss Truman enjoyed a build rather more suited to shot-putting than tennis, and her nerves were what my great aunt Lizzie used to call ‘not entirely dependable’.
“What’s the score?” I’d ask.
“She’s lost the first set” Mum would reply, the steam from her iron misting up the diagonal TV picture, “but Christine only needs this to break serve.” Truman would break the serve, and then double fault her way through the next service game.
A sport in which one had to break limbs or make a mistake twice over (and where we always lost) was a mystery too far for me. I retained some passing interest in
When up popped RogerTaylor…..and for the very first time, it looked like we might have a ruthless winner. You see, in those days, only Americans were ruthless. OK, the Australian Rod Laver was a winner, but he was an android with a funny hooter. Great player and all that, but he won without seeming to break into anything beyond a vague glow. Like Nigel Mansell, he was the best in a fundamentally boring way, and about as charismatic as R2D2. But
But
To be fair to my native isle, a little later there was Virginia Wade: she won the title in 1977 – and like Edmund Hillary in 1953, she came top in an important Royal year. But this was a scam, and we all knew it: not only did she sound like Pik Botha, she shared his sexuality. Wade had been nurtured by the excellence of white South African training, not by keen amateurism on some suburban park’s gravel Courts. And such were the attitudes towards lesbianism in those days, the unspoken sentiment was ‘Well, she won – and so she should: she’s a bloody bloke’.
In the same year,
Much later came Tim Henman, and although he clearly had the genes (his forebears had been galloping around
The centuries changed hands and found me to be a man who – at last – represented the triumph of experience over optimism. As retirement approached, I took up the game of tennis again while with friends in
Last Friday, against my better judgement, I took time out from doing other stuff to cheer on Andy Murray. By now a senior student of Deepak Chopra thinking, it was my intention to focus all those painstakingly acquired powers on the telly, and alter the quantum future in
That said, I have a hunch that Andrew Murray will finally match the achievement of Bunny Austin in 1938 – perhaps even go on to multiple wins. And if that saying of the sooth alone might doom the poor young chap, he needs to add but one more weapon to his armoury to be assured of ultimate success: The Grunt.
Think on this: look at Truman, Taylor, Barker, Henman and Murray. Actually, looking isn’t enough - you’ll need to listen: and what you’ll discern is that they have not so much as an oink between them.
While in the States ‘grunt’ is a noun meaning ‘trainee’, in pro-tennis it is a verb whose hidden meaning was clocked by all those who truly desired success. Grunters are seen as folks who cheat: playing mucous mind-games to put off their opponents. But if you listen carefully, the contemporary tennis grunt is in reality based on the secret Calisthenics of Celestial Catarrh, and absolutely guaranteed to make any Black Belt in guttural judo invincible.
Thanks to the new roof on
Very few people know this, but there is a secret society called the
And here’s the clincher: none of the top six male seeds today are members of 4C. This year’s final rounds were grunt-free. Yesterday’s match may have been a classic, but classic schmassic – four hours sixteen minutes and not a grunt within earshot? That’s not ruthless tennis. Showing dignity and composure when you lose? People in 4C don’t do sportsmanship and good manners. Clearly, these guys can’t cut it.
All Andy Murray need do to attract the attention of 4C’s top bananas is whack a few balls at the umpire, break the odd racket, snarl now and then…and get grunting. So show willing, Mr Murray. Grunt it and they will come. Grunt me this one last wish, and the Championship will one day be yours.