Anyone for Tennis?

“The thing about this new surface”, Darren said,” is that it fluffs up the balls”. Then he leaned in conspiratorially so that the ladies at the table couldn’t hear, “and you thought that only happened in the porn industry”.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or not, seeing as how I’d only met him thirty seconds earlier. But it was corporate entertainment, so I chuckled quietly. “Have you watched much of the tennis” I asked. “Are you mad”, he said, “I got tennised out after Henri Laconte retired, I only come here now for the free drink and food”. With that, he tucked into his salmon fillet and quaffed into another glass of Chardonnay. He’d been doing this corporate hospitality thing for ten years and was getting a bit fed up with it.

The Melbourne Cup in November is supposed to be the highlight of the entertainment year. Not only do you get fed and watered on somebody else’s time, but you have the chance of winning some money too. The AFL final in September comes next, if only because Victorians would give their right arm to be at the match. The boxing day test at the MCG is popular as cricket is the means by which Australians can parade the cloak of their national pride on the wider stage.

So Tennis is a bit of a poor cousin and the corporate hospitality carries little lustre when you can pay at the gate. The Australian Open is also an opportunity for cloned Russians and Serbians to grunt at each other for two weeks before one of them walks away with a shiny cup and a ridiculous amount of cash. The Australians tend to bow out pluckily (after being brave battlers, as the national stereotype requires) in round four or so. They hanker for the days of Pat Cash, Pat Rafter and Yvonne Goolagong, when the plucky locals sometimes won. Now they only have Leighton Hewitt, a man so disliked here that you’d swear he was English.

Proud people that the Aussies are, they don’t particularly like hosting a tournament for pampered Europeans. But they go along anyway, watch a couple of games and retire to the bar. I lasted nine games of a Leighton Hewitt match before the heat and boredom got to me. Centre Court in Melbourne gets up to 50c and our seats were smack under the blazing sun. A little man moved around the crowd squirting sun crème on spectators whether they asked for it or not. At least he didn’t try and rub it in, because tennis is camp enough without that.

As the sun beat down and Leighton bored his opponent into submission, my mind wondered and I found myself counting the ball boys and line officials. Tennis must be the only game with more officials than competitors and most of them seemed as fed up as me. One particular line judge sat with his head on his chin until the very last moment when his skills were required. He would then shout “out” or not shout it as the case may be, before returning to his pose of Rodin’s The Thinker and dreams of fluffy balls in other contexts.

The little man with the sun crème was heading in my direction with a manic grin on his face, so I beat a hasty retreat to the bar. I met Darren there and he was amazed at my fortitude. “It’s too hot in there”, he said. “Your beer warms up coming out of the tap”. I’m not one to argue with someone about the merits of warm beer, so I retired with him to the relative coolness of the corporate beer garden. Some of the ladies from our corporate invitational group joined us and we took to chatting about who was the hunkiest male tennis player. I took a back seat on this one, not so much to protect my heterosexuality from doubt, as to cover up my complete ignorance of tennis. The ladies agreed that Andy Roddick was the cream of the crop. “What about Nadal?”, Darren suggested. “Is he the one you fancy most?” one of them asked. Darren didn’t blink before he replied, “Oh, I’m not on that side of the fence. I’m married with three kids. I just find it easier to socialise and do business when you’re a bit camp. You might say I’m gay in the am and straight in the pm”. She didn’t look convinced. So he leaned towards her and winked. “I’m not gay, but I do help them out occasionally when they’re stuck”.

They had a large screen in the beer garden but few people seemed interested. As day session drifted into night session, we wandered out into Richmond and the lure of its many pubs. Leighton had made it safely through without requiring our support. From the grunts eminating from the Rod Laver Arena, it was clear that another Eastern European clone was progressing smoothly in the competition. We wandered into the City which was happily getting on with things as though the tennis never existed. One of the benefits of Melbourne is that it’s many sports facilities are within easy reach of the City centre. It’s easy to walk to them and it’s easy to walk away from them.

In the bars of Richmond, most people were watching the Cricket, a sport in which Australians can expect to excel. The only problem was, India was hammering them. Darren wasn’t happy and this made him more determined to squeeze as much free beer out of our compliant hosts as possible. “Australians are split”, he said, “between the 1% of the population who are elite sportspeople and 99% who like drinking beer while watching them. We keep our beer drinking side of the deal up. Why can’t they keep their bloody elite athlete side of the bargain up?” As somebody who has always been firmly in the 99% of the equation, I could only agree and raise a toast to socialising. The best game of all and one you nearly always win.