WIMBLEDOOM

I don’t know, it could be me; growing up on the East Coast where Anglophilia came with the same conditioning as eating your peas, but Wimbledon was once a really big deal. Nowadays, it sneaks in and out like yet another Peter, Paul & Mary revival. The tournament is underway, lots of foreign players with polysyllabic names grunting their shots down the line. There are some Americans too, but most of them come from Florida and have no edge. Who these people are is anyone’s guess. The revolving door spins so fast that fans can’t even thrust their nationalism in time before the next teenage flavor of the month takes over: She’s from where, Doc, Lithuania? No, Latvia…I think. The only player that currently sticks out is Maria Sharapova. Don’t ask me about her game. I don’t know if she’s even right or left handed, I just know that she happened to win Wimbledon last year…and, oh yeah,…that’s she’s hot. Admit it, she may be good, but she’s not the sport’s poster girl because of her forehand volley.

Tennis, God, if there were ever a sport where bravado was king and decorum a curse it’s tennis. Where petulance reigns endorsements thirty years past one’s prime. I mean, who wouldn’t buy shaving cream from Ille Nastase? I blame the demise of tennis on the Swedes, with Bjorn Borg being Public Enemy Number One. Yes, I know, I’m sounding like a gringo-jingo. One of those ugly Americans that performs an expletive filled tirade because he can’t wear shorts into the Sistine Chapel. The one’s who eat McDonalds after a morning promenade along the banks of the Seine. But I’m right on this one. Tennis ruled when crass, ornery Americans dominated the sport. It wasn’t about playing a tenacious baseline game or storming the net. It was about bawdy swagger.

I blame the Swedes because they were the anti-Connors and anti-McEnroe; the kids who put apples on the teacher’s desk. The ones who sat in the front row and wouldn’t let you copy their geometry proofs when you were in a jam. They were what Herman’s Hermits were to the Rolling Stones. Matts Wilander and Stephan Edberg were simply sissies. But it was Borg’s mild mannered ways that anesthetized tennis to Orwellian levels; playing like a cat on carpet with his small wooden rackets…allegedly raising the bar with his passive on-court demeanor. As a result the sport slit its throat by debunking the shenanigans of Connors and McEnroe; unknowingly killing the golden goose of attitude that put Wimbledon on par with the Super Bowl. In its wake we got syborgs like Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker and Pete Sampras driving the ball with stolid blitzkrieg might. Our interest waned.

These days Wimbledon is just a nice little tennis tournament, dying with the WASPs on rainy Edgartown mornings instead of enticing a new generation’s worth of interest. Wimbledon, Wimbledoom…pass me a taco Bucky.