Note: The vast majority of these words are those of Virginia Wade, taken directly from Virginia Wade’s much lengthier account of this day from her autobiography: Courting Triumph. Some words have been added, changed, or reshuffled for purposes of this piece. Wimbledon’s sixteen years, its fifteen failures. Those journalists had not written about me hundreds of times; They […]
“Should we drink to your birthday or to your panties?”* The question echoes in the crowded room. A courtroom, Tinling calls it. Later a judgement from one of the jurors: “You have brought sin and vulgarity into tennis.” Outside the war is over, but not its unisex trends. Unimaginative men are still in charge of […]
Once upon a time, a girl was born in Moscow who dreamed of winning Wimbledon. She worked hard on her serve and groundstrokes, then knocked on doors of the rich and privileged for help. “Too tall, too slow, too clumsy,” the Russian prince said. “Good enough for us,” the Prince of Kazakhstan said. Money was […]
Tatjana Maria’s grand slam record before reaching the Wimbledon semifinals in 2022: 13 losses in qualifying rounds, 23 losses in the first round; 10 losses in the second round, 1 loss in the third round. In other words, her greatest success by far comes at age 34 a year after giving birth to her second […]
With Soviet Union Forever! the propoganda posters shout. Propaganda Posters = Truth, the truth of propaganda posters. Jan Kodes the “son of an independent businessman—reject application to Secondary education!” Eventually the Czechs soften their communist principles. Kodes witnessed the result outside his window in August, 1968: a parking lot full of Russian tanks. Kodes one of […]
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Clouds broke, breaching their way across the London sky, smokey and wispy in their sunburned paleness and altogether calming in their paced slowness. Below though, chaos reigned, raining down at speeds fearsome as racket hands shook and dreams shivered, wavered and quivered with goosebumps on tight ropes of potential happenings. Breaths were being held, choking […]
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What Pablo Casals did for the cello Andres Segovia for the classical guitar Picasso for modern art Manolo Santana did for tennis in Spain. He inspired a generation who inspired a generation who inspired a generation so that every tennis aficionado knows what Spanish tennis now is—both a style that evolved and a long list of […]
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Mark on his Painting: “Pat Cash occupies a special place in my young tennis heart. He was someone we all aspired to in Australia. At the junior tournaments we all wore the chequered head band and everyone leapt at the ball just that little bit harder mimicking Cash’s athleticism. This was the thing that most captivated […]
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When the ancient Greeks sculpted the victors of an Olympic event, the goal was to produce not the athlete itself but the perfect, idealized image of the athlete, the body in rhythmos, the discus throw imagined as god-like, eternal. In Myron’s Discus Thrower, the arms fully extended to their perfect still point form a perfect arc […]
Pressure: “the exertion of a force on one body by another body, fluid, etc.” Item: Mouth ulcers every year when Wimbledon comes around. Cliché: Andy carries the weight of an entire nation, 76 years since the last male champion. Item: Murray got tight, choked for long stretches in his first grand slam final (2008 US […]