Tennis: The Men - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

When I first began following tennis, all the stars were came ready-made. The likes of John Newcombe, Ilie Nastase, Billie-Jean King et al had all been plying their trade for several years. Newcombe was my first real favourite. I’m not precisely sure why he stood out, but I liked the way he actually seemed to enjoy playing the game. A brilliant volleyer, a nifty net-leaper after his victories, the Aussie always seemed to have a cheeky or rueful smile lurking beneath that drooping moustache.

Therefore I guess it was a sharp shock to the system when the scowly-faced Jimmy Connors rocked up at Wimbledon as the hottest ticket in town. With his pudding bowl haircut, staccato grunt and fierce double-handed strokes, the 21 year-old American represented a seismic shift in the tennis establishment. Amidst all the tour power struggles and politics, the Seventies had finally arrived.

As the professional era brought cash flooding into the sport, like pop stars its protagonists appeared to become ever more miserable. Ivan Lendl was the ultimate example. In his Eighties pomp the US-based Czech harvested titles by the dozen earning millions in the process, yet I can’t recall him ever with a smile on his face. Perhaps that’s because he never won Wimbledon, a fact with which he was confronted annually on these shores. His retort one year was that the SW turf should be ripped up, because grass was suitable only for golf.

Of course professional sport is a serious business. Success breeds not only confidence but also a sustained mini-economy of agents, sponsors, etc. If you need to eschew public displays of positive emotion in order to achieve that success, so be it. Through the Eighties and Nineties, Wimbledon continued to allow the Big Serve to flourish. Edberg, Stich, Krajicek and the mighty Pete Sampras all became champions thanks to a scorching first serve and a readiness to add further pressure by galloping to the net. If the opponent had the temerity to make a return, the point could still be seized with a climactic volley.

Since grass tournaments became exiled to just a few weeks in June, and those remaining offered slower, more bouncy conditions, serve-and-volley has more or less disappeared, even at Wimbledon. Rusedski, Roddick, Karlovic, Ivanisevic and – yes – Tim Henman resembled mere throwbacks in the twenty-first century and, while there are plenty of two-metre beanpoles in the world top twenty (Isner, Anderson Cilic) they seem content to sit on the baseline and, if their 140mph rockets come back over the net, indulge in rallies of thunderous groundstrokes. Over the years, some of the greatest gladiatorial rivalries I watched involved a server and returner. Think McEnroe v Borg, Sampras v Agassi and, in the women’s game, Navratilova v Evert. Even if I disliked one of the protagonists, I couldn’t deny they produced some intriguing encounters.

I confess I never liked Andre Agassi. Whilst he slowly matured from long-haired enfant terrible who once boycotted Wimbledon for its insistence on white clothing to chilled-out bald legend, I didn’t find him pleasant to watch. His baseline game was just as boring to me as the Sampras serve. Similarly, I couldn’t fully embrace the brilliance of Bjorn Borg. At Roland Garros and Wimbledon, he was a supreme winning machine, not coached but programmed. Maybe he’d still be winning Grand Slams now had he not taken the astonishing decision to retire with burnout at just 26.

Some players enjoy mercurial rises and equally fast falls. One of my favourites was Paradorn Srichaphan. As my girlfriend at the time was Thai, my attention was inevitably drawn to the man from Khon Kaen when he was drawn in the second round against third seed Agassi at Wimbledon in 2002. I recall following part of the match at my office desk, unable to hold back my emotions as he outplayed the American. He won five titles, reaching nine in the rankings but never made a Grand Slam quarter-final. His traditional Thai ‘wai’ greeting to the crowd was always humbling to witness and it’s a shame that fame went to his head a bit in the late Noughties to the detriment of his tennis.

Srichapan was no grass specialist, more a hard-court man. For decades, Wimbledon seemed to exist as a weird bubble, a million miles from the mainstream tennis world occupied by a host of European and Latin American claycourt specialists who rarely lasted into the second week at Wimbledon: Wilander, Kuerten, Bruguera, Muster, Moya, Corretja, Gomez, Ferrero, etc, etc. And who remembers the last man to win at Roland Garros before the Rafael Nadal era? Gaston Gaudio!

Sweden’s Mats Wilander first burst onto the scene at just 17, winning the French Open as an unseeded player. While I’ve seen many female players take the world by storm in their teens – ‘Ice Queen’ Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Maria Sharapova or the current Centre Court sensation ‘Coco’ Gauff – the blokes tend to mature a bit later. One exception was a certain ginger-haired giant from Germany, Boris Becker. In 1984 he briefly wowed the outside court crowds as a sixteen year-old qualifier then the following year blew us all away with his athleticism and sheer youthful exuberance. He was the youngest ever and the first unseeded (there were only 16 seeds back then) Gentlemen’s Singles Wimbledon champion and we all loved him. 

After trading titles with Edberg for several years, ‘Boom-Boom’ Becker lost his cheery demeanour and I would support even Sampras against him. He would become as sullen as Lendl, another in the train of Wimbledon bad boys stretching from Connors to Kyrgios. Yet there can be a fine line between love and hate in that distant relationship between sport superstar and yours truly viewing on TV.

At first, Connors was a breath of fresh air before lapsing into unpleasant whinger. Jeff Tarango was a disqualification waiting to happen, Canadian-turned-Brit Greg Rusedski barely hid a nasty temper behind the matey grin and current ‘bad boy’ Nick Kyrgios frustratingly combines outrageously brilliant shots with outrageously disgraceful behaviour. In my opinion, the Aussie’s lack of respect for fellow players, officials, everybody really, makes him not good, bad but downright ugly.

The first ‘personality’ player I recall supporting was the Romanian llie Nastase. His occasional outbursts earned him the unwanted epithet ‘Nasty’ but his exquisite touch with the racket and frequent clowning around with spectators made him a perennial favourite of mine. Two decades later, nobody cheered more than me when Croat Goran Ivanisevic overcame injury, three finals defeats and a short fuse to surprisingly clinch the Wimbledon crown in 2001.

However, I have yet to mention my all-time favourite player, who could be good, bad and ugly, often in the same match! I’m talking, of course about John McEnroe. I was bitterly disappointed when he lost to Borg in the classic 1980 Wimbledon final but delighted when the super Swede was finally dislodged a year later. From then on, Mac rivalled Viv Richards as my all-time sporting hero. Don’t get me wrong; I’d despair at his snarling arguments with umpires and line judges, urging him to shut up and get on with winning the game. And winning was one of his most appealing traits. When focussing on tennis I don’t think there’s been anyone bar perhaps Roger Federer more pleasurable to watch. His lengthy wind-up serve may not have been 140mph but it was almost unreadable. Possessed with exquisite volleying skills and sublime touch, he was also one of the greatest doubles players who ever lived. In 1984 he was in outstanding form and his total demolition of great rival Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon was awe-inspiring. At 60, he also ranks as the most brilliantly witty and acerbic commentator on TV.

Supermac didn’t have everything his own way and never won the Aussie or French Slams. However, these days, the big names can compete on all surfaces. We are probably now living in one of the greatest oligopolies in tennis history, as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and occasionally our own Andy Murray have enjoyed a near-stranglehold on the major titles for well over a decade. They really have taken tennis to new heights, displaying incredible footwork, stamina, athleticism and mental strength. All of them have suffered injuries which for anyone else would have prefaced an irreversible slide towards retirement, but they seem to come back almost stronger than ever.  Nadal has made the European clay courts his personal empire while Federer and Djokovic have been, and still remain, fierce competitors and engaging personalities of the highest order.

But I hope these thirty-somethings do eventually let someone else get a look-in. The likes of Berdych, Wawrinka, Del Potro and Thiem have had to settle for scraps for too long. For all the genius of Roger, Rafa and Novak I feel that men’s tennis is crying out for another Becker or McEnroe, someone to play with superlative steel, skill and a smile.