Getting tough on tennis doinks!

Apologies for returning to the subject of tennis so quickly, but I realized for the first time watching Murray beat Nadal in their Australian Open quarter-final this morning that my three favourite players of all time are also amongst the quickest and least fussy the game has known. And Murray and Nadal aren’t.

Laver and Borg barely spent any time between points, rarely questioned line calls, didn’t resort to towels between every point (or at all, in fact), and, in Laver’s day, didn’t even sit down when changing ends – players used to pause at the water dispenser on their way to the other end, true, but that was it. And no endless doinking of the ball on the ground before serving. And no microscopic examination of the court before challenging a line-call. And no yelling “C’mon!” or “Allez!” or “Vamos – Si!” all the time as a means of psyching their opponents.

They played the game clean and fast, and didn’t whinge when things went against them. 

Now, Federer isn’t quite in that league of speedy saintliness: obviously he sits down at the changeover, and does use the towel quite frequently, and does resort to challenges using the Hawkeye system (although he hates the system and is almost invariably wrong). He has also taken to shouting “C’mon!” at regular intervals. But he moves swiftly from one point to the next and serves so quickly that his service games are often over within a minute, sometimes much less – moving from, say, 5-4 to 5-5 is often an oddly subliminal experience for spectators. Did it really happen, or did we just imagine that ace, that unreturnable serve, that winning volley, and that down-the-line passing shot?  

On the whole, the new breed of player, including Federer, is much more gentlemanly than the likes of McEnroe, Connors and Nastase, whose oncourt appearances so often turned into surly, ugly, snarling loutfests. Nastase used to compound the sin by doing comic turns that would leave the vast majority of us stoney-faced – as Clive James once memorably remarked, Nastase was a comedian for people without a sense of humour. 

I remember being in the Centre Court stands cheering on the ramrod-backed Stan Smith when he beat the far more naturally gifted Nastase in the 1972 final simply because he always behaved with old-fashioned decorum (even though he once accused me of having a shifty look about me when he caught me trying to get a Wembley Arena drinks dispenser to disgorge a can of 7-Up after it had swallowed my cash).  

I’ve only twice stopped following tennis – the first time was during John McEnroe’s prime: it was just unbearable to see so much talent lavished on such a horrid, brattish twerp. If I want to spent time with foul-mouthed, retarded yobboes, I can sit upstairs on a bus when the products of Mr. Balls’s superb school system are wending their homewards for an evening devoted to drinkin’ and stabbin’.

The other hiatus was occasioned by the sheer jaw-cracking dullness of Pete Sampras: brilliant he may have been, but my God he was boring at the same time.

The annoying aspect of today’s game is the collective behaviour of the players, rather than individual failings. Here are my suggestions for improving the spectator experience:

1. •No shrieking by female players when executing a shot. At all. Ever. It’s an attempt to             put off the opponent and therefore amounts to cheating. (This should be accompanied by the banning of coaches who urge the little madams to do it).

1. •Ball boys and girls should have nothing to do with players’ towels: last year, I saw one player blow a sizable oyster of snot into his towel before handing it to the nearest ball-girl. How disgusting! How inconsiderate. How unhygienic! Learn some manners, you horrible man.

1. •No more than three towellings-down per set during games, and players should be made to ask the umpire’s permission each time, so a record can be kept of how many times they’ve done it. On exceptionally hot days, the permitted maximum should be raised to one per game for each player. Players afflicted by projectile sweating should have to get a doctor’s certificate certifying that they have over-active sweat glands, and this should be announced by the umpire before the match. (Ball boys could compensate by giving the sweat patches on the court a quick mop during changeovers.)

1. •Bellowing and violent fist-pumping should be confined to end-of-set celebrations: a more lenient attitude may be taken during deciding sets.

1. •No more than three ball doinks before serving. 

1. •The receiving player should only be able to hold up the serve if attacked by a stinging insect or if some idiot in the crowd lets out a shout. (The yeller should be forcibly ejected from the stadium for being a prat.)

1. •Swearing – or even whining unattractively - when addressing any official should incur automatic disqualification from the current tournament, and the next.

1. •Any player apologizing to their opponent for a piece of luck -  a ball hitting the net-cord and dribbling over or a mis-hit ball catching the base-line for a winner – should be made to apologise again, this time for lying: they never, ever mean it.

1. •No re-taking of a serve following a let-cord – if it wins the point, great: it if sits up nicely so the receiver can smash it away, great.

1. •The abolition of pre-match interviews with players: they’re silly and pointless and tell us precisely nothing – leave them alone.

1. •On hard courts, line-call challenges should be instant. Wandering over to see whether the ball left a mark and then standing with your hands on your hips and a quizzical expression on your face for ten seconds before challenging should be banned right now! Players use the device to catch their breath and/or to annoy their opponents: just stop it.

• Delay showing any early-stage women’s matches on television until you are sure the scoreline isn’t going to be 6-0,6-1. This will stop male viewers’ blood pressure rocketing when they realize that the useless player they’re watching get wiped humiliatingly off the court in 37 minutes is receiving the same prize money as the gutsy, skillful chap you just saw giving his all as he was beaten in a four-hour five-set thriller. 

Professional tennis is already fun to watch, but bringing in all these measures would immediately double this spectator’s enjoyment – and I’m sure the same would be true for many fellow-addicts.

Murray played a blinder, by the way - but you can’t help wondering if Nadal’s knees will ever allow him to climb to the top of the rankings again.