Some addenda to last post:
- Tune in to the Roger and Raffa show at Wimbledon also by all means because they are so much FUN to watch ... Federer especially, who plays the prettiest game since Ken Rosewall (who got upset for the championship at Wimbledon by a young slash-and-burn upstart named Jimmy Connors in one of the first I saw televised). Roger fairly wafts across the court--fuzz up your eyes a little bit, and you can't see his feet when he's in motion. I'd swear that the very first time I saw a sweat-spot on the back of his shirt was against Nadal last year. Of course the latter has his own visual appeal as well ... very different and much like Connors of old Not only is he a cutie-pie (facial close-ups of Roger don't flatter), but he is the sweating, digging, swirling, raging beast of a player every moment of the match. On the other hand, Roger makes it look so easy, especially in past years, that it can get a little boring. Nadal will keep him literally on his toes, I hope.
- I'll have to confess that my competitive tennis will be mostly confined to the vicarious from now on. Except perhaps pitty-pat with the grandkids. A contorted, out-of-shape first-serve seems to have done me in while playing in a Tennis-League (.com, if your interested) match a couple of years ago. And maybe condemned me to a bit of chronic neck-and-back neuritis/neuralgia for the foreseeable future. Pity, please.
- But playing or watching, Tennis is such gentleman-and-lady sport! (The gender draws are still referred to in that way, though I notice they no longer post "Mr." and "Miss" next to their names. I think "Ms." threw them off their game.) No real physical contact, and the harshest (official) words spoken are "Fault" and "Quiet, please." You've got "love" and "service," "deuce" and "advantage," "set" and "match"--very pleasant and quaint. And when you win a point, you score not one, but FIFTEEN. Ah, those romantic Frenchmen, who invented the game, after all, way back in the Age of Chivalry. The "Faux!" and "Silence, s'il vous plait" that you heard at Roland Garros are thus quite ancient, though the stadium itself is named (more chivalry and romance) after a fallen WWI fighter pilot, not a tennis "ace."
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