Tennis

I am a fan. I have watched Wimbledon for decades, & probably enjoyed the era when personality was as entertaining as the game itself more than the modern game. Sports science, the frightening focus of the top players, lightweight racquets, the heavy serve & baseline play, have all made it less enjoyable & exciting to my mind.

You have to admire the dedication & discipline of top sportsmen & women. I just wish they would show that they are enjoying themselves more. It almost seems that they have been brainwashed into a deadpan focus on this point in this game. Emotion is not to be encouraged until that final moment of winning, when it all comes pouring out. You make a mistake & you turn round & move on seamlessly to the next point, or you "abuse your racquet" like a petulant child, for which crime you can be fined!

Players who have an instictive feel for the game, rather than a computer like calculation of the percentages of various shots, are few and far between. Players who take risks & try the clever inspirational shots hardly seem to exist. It's all hard slog - heavy unreturnable serves & the impeccable placement of bullet like baseline shots which kill rallies dead.

It is such a game of the mind that the least lapse in concentration, the least distraction can have you down in a set before you know it. Repartee with the crowd is a thing of the past. Some players even wrap their heads in a towel so they can blot out the crowd.

Give me Connors, Nastase, Navratilova, King, even McEnroe any day. Brilliant players who were hugely entertaining to watch. People who loved their sport & were sporting in their play. People who had a real relationship with the crowd. People for whom the prizemoney wasn't the main incentive, which is just as well as it wasn't the mega bucks of today.

Sport isn't just another day at the office as some say. It's far more than the sum of it's parts. Tennis is much like life, it's about values, belief in yourself, fairness. If it isn't that then what's the point of it? It's just another moneymaking opportunity, for you and all the hangers on.