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Tennis, anyone? These words are said to have first been uttered by Humphrey Bogart in the movie Sabrina. They sound innocent enough but, like Bogart in the movie The Maltese Falcon, they carry with them menace and a hint of danger.
People who do not buy this book will unhesitatingly answer yes to the question “Tennis, anyone?” and run off to buy a racquet and other tennis paraphernalia. Only years later will these unfortunate souls be seen again, dazed, bedraggled, bathed in perspiration, badly sunburned, and clutching their latest tennis racquets to their chests because of the heart attack suffered upon learning the cost of the racquets. These wretched creatures are likely to face a lifetime of penury, pulled muscles, unpleasant companions, and penitential weekends away from family and friends with only Power Bars and Gatorade to sustain them.
It is to be hoped that by perusing this book, you will at least hesitate before responding too cavalierly to any question with the word tennis in it. You will learn enough to pause; consider your options; and remember how pleasant it is to doze off on a Saturday afternoon while reading a book like this in a comfortable easy chair in an air-conditioned room in the presence of TV, food, and cases of previous years’ Beaujolais nouveau. You will have time to remember how much easier, less embarrassing and more satisfying it is to watch and criticize others hitting backhands and overheads than it is to attempt to do these things yourself. You can take a few moments to reflect on the meaning of life, the purpose of your education, and how foolish, overweight, knock-kneed—in short, how much like Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon—you look in shorts or a mini-tennis dress.
“Tennis, anyone?” is a question that only you can definitively answer for yourself. It is, however, well to bear in mind other phrases that begin with the word “tennis.” These include “tennis elbow,” “tennis injury,” and “tennis bum.” These words are not even questions, like “Tennis anyone?” They are unequivocal, affirmative statements derived from decades of human experience. They are ignored at your peril.
Tennis is a popular activity that can always be played at some small risk to life and limb—and much greater risk to pride and self-confidence. On the other band, because it is a popular activity, tennis can always be more safely read about in magazines, studied in books, and scrutinized on high definition TV. Thus, one approach to the game is signing up for more cable TV, plastering your walls with pictures of attractive tennis players from Sports Illustrated bathing suit issues, and buying and handing out to everyone you know who mentions the word “tennis” copies of The Wimp’s Guide to Tennis. This is indeed the approach to the sport taken by the author. This approach saves time, energy, and anxiety and ensures that instead of throwing your money away on tennis pros and tennis gear, you throw it away on a far worthier, or at least needier, cause—me.
Of course it is possible that you have already thrown your money away on tennis pros and tennis gear because you foolishly failed to make this book your first tennis-related purchase. Indeed, you may have failed to buy this book at all and are instead in the remainder section of some seedy second hand bookstore leafing through it to get to the exciting parts. You have gotten exactly what you deserve—in all probability including a rash of some kind from the last person to have leafed through the book—for flouting the cardinal rule of tennis or, for that matter any, activity involving physical exercise and dexterity: it is always preferable to spend a lifetime studying it than a morning or afternoon doing it. Do you suppose it is mere coincidence that for two weeks every summer tens of thousands of people go to the Wimbledon grounds but only a handful ever set foot on the courts—and that handful is paid to do so?
If you have been imprudent enough to purchase tennis equipment, all is not irretrievably lost. Much of this equipment can be recycled for other uses. Tennis balls, for example, are excellent for playing fetch with golden retrievers, although this will require acquiring a golden retriever. (Playing fetch without a golden retriever quickly becomes tiring, and it is unlikely that you will slobber all over the ball as thoroughly as a golden retriever does.) The tennis shoes you have bought can then be thrown at the golden retriever when you tire of playing fetch before the retriever does, or when the retriever is the neighbor’s dog and turns out to be a Rottweiler. The retriever will also enjoy gnawing on the shoes when you fall asleep after an exciting afternoon of fetch. Just remember to take the shoes off before falling asleep.
One way to handle the question “Tennis, anyone?” is mentally to substitute other famous phrases and act accordingly. Especially recommended for this purpose are these warnings: “Beware the Ides of March,” about not playing with anyone in a tennis dress that resembles a toga; T.S. Eliot’s well known line from The Wasteland, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” about the fun of playing on clay courts; and the universal threat “Your ass is grass” about playing on slippery grass courts with people who turn out to be former camp counselors and Marine drill sergeants.
Good responses to the question “Tennis, anyone?” should include “Nyet,” “No way, José,” and “Sez who?,” depending on whether the question is asked in the Russian Tea Room, a Mexican restaurant, or the cafeteria at a Canarsie high school. If asked this question while running for President of the United States, say, “Read my lips” and instruct your lawyer to file briefs in the United States Supreme Court so that the votes of Florida tennis players will not be counted. Then, as President, you can declare your tennis opponents terrorists, lock them up at Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key, use the White House tennis court exclusively for Easter egg hunts, and become what so many aspiring tennis players eventually become: a golfer.
The History of Tennis
The sport we now know as tennis can be traced to two distinct origins: a European source in the courts and monasteries of the French nobility and an American source in the savage ball game of the ancient Aztecs. Because of these origins, tennis has always mixed conservative, elitist European traditions with more populist, democratic New World tendencies.
The European game had rules as complicated as chess and was played on a bizarre court designed by the Marquis de Sade for chasing women dressed as French maids. The European game was originally called jeu de paume, from the phrase “I will crush you with the palm of my hand,” which the Marquis de Sade used to say to the French maids and Louis the XIV used to say to his courtiers at the start of a game. This game is called real or court tennis today by the eleven people in the world who still play it. Chasing the French maids is now called reality TV.
The French tried playing a simplified version of jeu de paume on a barge, but it sank at Le Havre. Thereafter only Jean Jacques Cousteau much enjoyed playing underwater, and even he had no way of calling an opponent’s shot out without drowning. Tennis was important enough in Europe that the Dauphin of France sent Henry the Fifth of Great Britain a can of tennis balls to compensate for taking much of his land and property. When the soggy balls failed to bounce, the incensed Henry slew thousands of Frenchmen at Agincourt, making a famous speech comparing the balls of English men to those of Frenchmen, a comparison many Englishmen repeat to this day.
In the Aztec ball game, by contrast, hundreds of matches were played simultaneously on the same court. This was because no one could decipher the Aztec system of writing, and players therefore had no way to determine who had actually signed up for the court. Losers in these ancient Aztec matches were not only crushed in the palm of a king’s hand but had their hearts cut out and eaten, making it quite a chore to sweep the court after a match and even more difficult to maintain a regular Tuesday tennis group. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the Aztecs introduced several improvements to the French game, including the invention of rubber, which allowed the balls actually to bounce; the use of a lightweight machete as a forerunner to the tennis racquet; and the sale of nachos and quesadillas in the refreshment stand.
As every school child knows, the aristocratic Old World and populist New World strains of tennis were finally reconciled in the famous Tennis Court Oath administered at Versailles in the eighteenth century. As a result, the French revolution occurred. French maids in the United States became waitresses at Hooters, and the game of court tennis was confined to an ancient regime, which consisted of sommeliers at over-priced restaurants and Charles de Gaulle. The bourgeoisie laid claim to Robespierre, Marat, Les Miz, the province of Quebec, and an outdoor tennis game. Later, in the Russian Revolution, Lenin declared that the masses should have an indoor game as well, leading to squash and racquetball. Hippies in the 1960s applied these revolutionary principles while on acid and ended up with badminton and a ball that isn’t round and has feathers. As the hippies aged and feathers fell off the badminton ball (called a shuttlecock), the world was introduced to pickle ball, a game supposedly named after a dog named “Pickles” who liked chasing after the defeathered whiffle balls used in the game. This has left tennis historians with a so far unanswerable question: why would anyone name a dog “Pickles?”
Since Versailles, tennis has become a more exhilarating, more accessible, more widely known sport. Oaths of various kinds uttered on the court, however, have remained one of its most ubiquitous features.
The new people’s tennis had a few growing pains. A Major Winfield laid out official dimensions for tennis courts in 1875 but, being the repressed Victorian that he was, had other things, such as Mrs. Winfield, on his subconscious. He gave his tennis court an hourglass shape and called it a Sphairistike. That may explain why Major Winfield was not General or even Lieutenant Colonel Winfield. Tennis assumed its present rectangular configuration and name a few years later, thanks to a civilian Wimbledon groundskeeper with a flat-chested, no nonsense spouse.
At this point tennis spread through Europe and America like crabgrass in Scarsdale, causing it to be referred to as lawn tennis. Now great performers, like the Sears brothers, Big Bill Tilden, and the French “three Musketeers,” appeared in exciting competitions like Wimbledon, the Davis Cup, and Newport. Suzanne Langhorne Langley took off her petticoats and went flying through the air like an Isadora Duncan dancer according to all the old photographs. Bunny Austin, Fred Perry’s doubles partner, replaced his flannel trousers with shorts. Henri LaCoste played in short-sleeved alligator shirts. Gussy Moran showed up at Wimbledon in gold lamé tennis panties. Players were playing harder and taking off clothes right and left. And that was before Anna Kournikova, Janet Jackson, or internet porn sites.
Pictures of some of these early players show them holding slender racquets that seem unusual today because they were made of a substance known as wood. This substance was found in places known as forests containing objects known as trees. Fortunately, these were removed years ago in favor of oil derricks, allowing tennis racquets to be made out of more pliant, more synthetic and more expensive materials.
Patience Outerbridge introduced the game to the United States, where it was played on a bridge, the Outerbridge Crossing. Unfortunately, the bridge was not only windy, but also open to automobile traffic, wreaking havoc on players’ timing and reducing their numbers through accidents. Moreover, players at one end of the court had to pay a toll every time they came to the net, while those at the other were sometimes arrested for jaywalking.
As the game spread, suitable lawns were chewed up or used for golf courses, so substitute surfaces had to be found. A French brick maker whose design for a brick Eiffel Tower had been passed over found a use for his surplus bricks and vented much of his Gallic frustration by taking the bricks to the top of the Eiffel Tower as soon as it opened and dropping them on the design committee. The bricks pulverized into slow French red clay on which the design committee’s heirs have had to play endless points while ruining their tennis sneakers. Many hard and composite surfaces have subsequently been invented by orthopedic surgeons to guarantee a continuous demand for knee surgery.
Tennis was originally an amateur sport, but over time it became enmeshed in under-the-table payments and disguised appearance fees collectively denigrated as “shamateurism.” To remove the taint of shamateurism, tennis competitions were opened to declared professionals. The under-the-table transfers and disguised fees migrated to politics and became known as campaign financing.
A number of star players and strong personalities have fueled the growth of tennis in the twentieth century. These include Margaret Smith Court, Arthur Ashe, Pancho Gonzalez, and “Little Mo” Connolly, the often forgotten fourth Stooge. In the 1960s, Renee Richards, an ophthalmologist with an uncanny taste for ugly eyeglasses, had a sex change operation to be able to play on the women’s tour, showing the lengths to which players would go to avoid playing against the tempestuous Ilie Nastase. Players emerged from diverse countries and backgrounds. These included the graceful native Australian, Yvonne Goolagong; the dreadlocked African, Yannick Noah; the Queen of Wimbledon, Maria Bueno, a Brazilian; the Peruvian, Alex Olmedo; the flying Dutchman, Tom Okker, who emerged from Wagnerian opera; and Vitas Gerulaitis who emerged from who knows where the morning of a match.
A famous match occurred in the Houston Astrodome in 1969 when Billy Jean King, a woman player with a pioneering spirit, beat Bobby Riggs, a man actually old enough to have been a pioneer. Truth to tell, it wasn’t much of a match, with King winning easily, but it sparked interest in tennis clothing, women’s issues, and how much money tennis players make, all staples of the game today. Epic struggles also ensued between the brooding Swedish baseliner, Bjorn Borg, and the dyspeptic American server and volleyer, John McEnroe. These matches had a Shakespearean quality, with Hamlet on one side of the net and Mercutio with a New York accent on the other. A similar phenomenon developed in the women’s game whenever Chris Evert played Martina Navratilova. The matches between these two great women players took place during the Cold War and were closely monitored by military authorities after Navratilova defected to the West. Even though Navratilova was using her free time to take skiing lessons at Aspen, the Russian tennis federation was convinced she was practicing with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon on the White House tennis court. When Navratilova rushed the net at set point during an Easter Bowl Tournament in Miami, Evert hit a high defensive lob into a southeasterly breeze and triggered the Cuban missile crisis. The crisis was resolved only through secret diplomatic channels—namely, Charlie Pasarell, who explained to Fidel Castro that the situation was comparable to Dean Rusk hitting a foul ball after being badly fooled and swinging like a rusty gate at one of Castro’s curve balls.
Ultimately the genes and prize money of all the great tennis players were pooled and given to the Williams sisters, allowing them to play each other at peak television time and eliminating the distraction of other players with hard to pronounce names. To save money, the sisters even design and sew their own clothes the night before each match. The distractions are now provided by numerous announcers who comment on the sisters’ every move and facial expression.
Meanwhile tennis on the men’s side came to be dominated by the famous triumvirate of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. “Veni, vidi, vici,” said Federer after coming down from Transalpine Gaul to defeat Vercingetorix in a series of the grand slams in the years MMMVI to MMXIX AD, thereby seizing control of the other parts of Gaul now called the European Union, as well as the island of Corsica and the Rolex watch company. As Virgil praised the emperor Augustus, so did pundits descended from Edward Gibbons apotheosize the great Swiss tennis player Federer as a godlike philosopher king. But before being declared a god, Federer crossed the Rubicon once too often and lost some matches to the young Spanish pretender, Rafael Nadal.
Still as a young man, Nadal went on to conquer tennis stadiums in several continents, along with their attendant duchies, satrapies, and allies. His great naval Armada sailed toward the British Isles, threatening the Crown, the Exchequer and even Wimbledon itself. The well-known sportswriter Shakespeare described him as having a lean and hungry look, and eventually the rigors of play took their toil, exiling the fierce Spaniard to a Mediterranean island where he is rumored even now to be plotting a desperate escape and comeback.
So for now it is the third of the triumvirs, Novak Djokovic, who bestrides the world as its remaining tennis colossus. “Ave atque vale,” says each new gladiator forced to succumb to his will and his guile. But, as Gibbons reminds us, no empire and no emperor endures forever, and even now some new, rude beast—whether it be an Alcaraz, a Rublev, or some obscure pickle ball player from the Hamptons—slouches toward Queens or Australia to be born. Who it will be and when it will come, not even Edward Gibbon or Shakespeare could tell, only the fullness of time and future editions of this book.
Tennis has come a long way since the Dark Ages of the sport when court tennis balls had to be made fastidiously by hand and still did not bounce. Now the world machine produces more than twenty five million cans of rubberized tennis balls annually, more than even you could hit over a fence or into a net in a lifetime. If these balls were laid end to end they would circle the globe at the equator and become a menace to international shipping.
Tennis now spans the globe with evermore imaginative, evermore costly racquets and clothing. It is only a matter of time before tennis will be played in outer space. Then tennis will indeed have achieved its full potential: court time will become even more expensive, lack of gravity will make it even harder to keep the ball in the court, and one will find oneself playing with not one, but several suns in one’s eyes.