John Brazell

WIMBLEDON: A Bouncy-Ball Game on the Queen’s Lawn



Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 2010

by John Brazell

So we've had the longest Wimbledon tennis match ever between Long John Isner, a 6' 9" bazooka in short white pants, and a Frenchman, Nick Mahut, who measures up to Isner's navel.

I didn't watch the entire match and don't know all the details. It's possible the problem was neither could return serve.

Mahut who sports an IED haircut and a name more befitting a quarterback (hut hut) could do with a helmet for more reasons than the obvious. Both players are whippersnappers who've done more dozing than dazzling prior to their eleven hours on court and fifteen minutes of curiosity. Is it just coincidence or pizzazz they waited until the eleventh hour to get something done?

Now they've won the unofficial title of playing the longest tennis match -- a dance marathon with rackets and balls and without all the hugging and kissing. To their credit the players wobbled and leaned on each other for the Grande finale. This story is long on irony as Isner, the winner, who, when prostrate on the court is the longest tennis player by a yard.

I assume the match was on the up and up and not a plot to upstage the real winners and hog guest spots on late-night TV. Though, either player could easily throw a match of 980 points when all five officials dozed-off at the same time.

In my advanced group -- which doesn't refer to the level of play -- even the tennis players doze-off. It doesn't affect the score much, as no one can keep track of more than three or four points when they're fully awake. This leads straight into our system of governance and the application of true democracy, "He who yells loudest wins."

Wimbledon is a big pasture, the kind you feed the cows, chopped into a bunch of right angles. A court would resemble your lawn assuming you fertilized, watered, pulled weeds with tweezers and cut the grass with a pair of scissors. It's possible if you played on this surface regularly, rather than concrete or the highway, your knees could be recycled to a twelve-year-old girl or used for hinges on a barn door.

Playing the longest tennis match is a dubious distinction anyway.

Back in the old days Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe would have had no part of it. When things got slow, either one would have screamed invectives about the umpire's mother, girlfriend and dog and mentioned the similarities of the three. They'd goad their respective opponent till he was tossed, shake hands, and go have a beer at a decent hour.

Now tennis players are coddled and fawned over like royalty and in London fawned over by royalty. (I don't think "fawned" is a dirty word, but tell me if it is.) The queen loans her super poufy towels for the Wimbledon event, selects the suds and softener, and oversees the laundering. The only strenuous thing players do other than smack a ball when it is handed to them is to carry their tennis-racket-bags onto the court. For all we know the big bag contains Lance Armstrong's book, "How to keep em guessing" contraband blood platelet jerky and spray containers of Binaca and Right Guard for the post-match interview.

The "Epic" Wimbledon struggle was played over three days and took eleven hours on grass including forty "bathroom" breaks where who knows what goes on.

My primetime tennis buddies play half that much time on hard surface and are three or four times the age of the kids. Sure, it includes time for coffee, adjusting underwear and knee braces, chasing errant balls and bathroom breaks without a bathroom. Should you need a stop, and who doesn't, it's into the bushes pushing back poison ivy and prickly bushes thigh high as you go to go.

So if you're looking for a tennis hero and you think playing the game through the eleventh hour on a plush lawn with five attendants is a good number, consider some of the old guys down at the club or city courts playing for the fun of it on concrete. A lot of 'um have more shrapnel hinges for joints than your local Ace hardware Store. A lot of 'um have enough metal stents stretching their arteries to fire up the airport x-ray machine like a pinball machine. Unfortunately, none of 'um can remember the score.

: )

John L. Brazell is a native Texan and resides in the beautiful Hill Country near Austin, Texas. He's a retired corporate executive. John’s love for writing can be traced to high school typing class when he first typed, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." As the only boy in class he took the instruction literally and fell in love with a forty-pound Royal Typewriter and every girl in the class. 

He is a member of several writing groups and has been published in ezines, newsletters/newspapers, community and corporate publications. His unfinished version of the next "Great American Novel" is entitled, The Unfinished Great American Novel.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Jennifer Stewart
 1 year 318 days ago.
153 fans.
Well the match may have been boring, but your article sure is entertaining!
» left by John Brazell 1 year 318 days ago.
28 fans.
Hi Jennifer, thanks for dropping by. I suppose humor is the ultimate elixir. And there is something innately funny about watching two guys who can't close the deal go at it for eleven hours. Of all the animals on the little blue marble, we may be the funniest.
 
Good writing to you.
 
John
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