Fifty years of Wimbledon finals, and it comes to this one. Dreadful. At the very highest level, of course: but dreadful.
I have been watching Wimbledon finals for some fifty years now, which entitles me to the odd comparison which entitles me to the odd comparison and, evidently, to a measure of nostalgia.. Well then: this Sinner–Zverev is, beyond much doubt, one of the ugliest I can remember. Ugly, mind, not low-grade: those are two different things, and the distinction is worth defending tooth and nail. You can play draughts at the very highest level, and it is still draughts: it is not tennis. You can play baseball at the very highest level — one man hurling thunderbolts, the other trying to swat them back — and indeed the resemblance to what we saw on Centre Court today is getting embarrassing. But that is not quite tennis either; at any rate, not interesting tennis. What was served up out there was tennis stripped to the bone: the serve and nothing else or, in moments of grace, the serve and the return. Two shots; three, in fits of creative madness. The first two sets went to tie-breaks, as was inevitable: when neither man can lay a racquet on the other’s serve, the tie-break is not an epilogue — it is the only plot available.
And here history allows itself one of its finer ironies. A quarter of a century ago, on the upper floors of the All England Club, it was decided that the game had grown monotonous: too many aces, too much serve-and-volley, points that lasted a single breath. The grass was changed, and a game at long last restored to the rally was promised. It did not get off to the best of starts: the first year of the new turf — a hot summer lending a hand — was won by Goran Ivanišević, the serve made flesh, who had got in, what’s more, on an invitation. Twenty-five years on, the balance sheet reads as follows: serve-and-volley is well and truly dead — mission accomplished, take a bow. The serve, meanwhile, is in rude health and has bought itself a house on Centre Court. All it still takes is a hot summer like this one, the grass baked and the bounce skidding through, for the game to fall back into the hands of the bombers. Except that, in the meantime, nobody comes forward to the net any more: you serve, and then you watch. The operation was a complete success; the patient, alas, passed away.
In fairness, this year’s edition did its own bit on the bad-luck front. Alcaraz left at home with a dodgy wrist; the world’s best decimated between absences and premature exits; a semi-final graced by a man nudging forty — extraordinary, him; rather less extraordinary, a context that still allows it — and, in the other half of the draw, a wild card ranked 114 in the world who came within a step of the final. He would have been the first wild card to contest one since — of all people — Ivanišević: at Wimbledon the circles always close; a pity there is hardly any interesting tennis left inside them. Not exactly my cup of tea, as they say in these parts.
Let one thing be clear, to head off any misunderstanding: I do not believe in plots, machinations or premeditated malice towards tennis. I believe in something far more banal and far more human: they simply failed to govern the evolution of the tools — racquets, strings, balls — and of the surfaces. Other sports have managed it admirably. Skiing reined in geometries and materials when the kit had started travelling faster than the athletes; golf has already resolved to put the ball on a lead before its courses grow too small for the game. The list of sports that police their equipment is a long one. Not tennis: it let things run, and every so often re-seeded the grass, convinced that would do. It will not. The result is there for all to see, today, on the most famous lawn in the world: two formidable players, an exceptionally high standard, and a sport that looks less and less like itself.
Sinner won
Sinner won, in the end, and it is the least surprising news of the day: a tenth consecutive victory over his opponent, a second straight title here. Let us console ourselves with this: the Italians are happy, even without a football World Cup.
See you next year, then, hoping for rain, softer grass and the return of a Wimbledon, in other words, in which “serve” is followed by something other than a full stop.. A Wimbledon d’antan, serve-and-volley included.
I am not optimistic.
