The more the years pass, the less interested I am in Wimbledon. I used to love it. It was the sound of summer. Those green courts were the look of summer too. Perhaps this year it's because it's not yet summer. Today it's actually pretty cold. But I think the real reason is, and I know I'm not the first person to say this, is that tennis is boring nowadays.
There's no Brit to cheer on of note, except 'Tiger' Tim, and he'll be out next round so there's no point getting excited, and the winner of last year's womens' singles finals came as a complete suprise to me - if you'd asked me who won last year before I'd read it I may well have said Evonne Goolagong.
Tennis players no longer stick in the mind. It's they who have made this sport boring. Where are the characters? Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova all immediately spring to mind. Even Vitas Gerulitis, Mats Wilander, Andrea Jaeger, Roscoe Tanner, Arthur Ashe still register. But today's lot? It stopped being interesting at Pete Sampras. No personality. No one's got a personality anymore. Not that half of those mentioned were famous for their characters, but somehow I just remember them more.
Plus it's so fast it's unwatchable.
Is it just me?
2 comments:
I totally agree. Now they're just tennis machines, designed to win and make money. In the Seventies they were amusing characters who were rather sexy and naughty - Connors, Nastase.
The women have never been interesting, though
I never have liked tennis.
At school the tennis 'experience' usually consisted of two hours per year (during Wimbledon fortnight, naturally) of boys twatting tennis balls at each other as hard as they could.
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