Wimbledon. Other than an underrated B-movie where the bashful Brit was actually allowed to win (that’s the power of the silver screen, kids), Wimbledon represents the pinnacle of the tennis calendar, in the eyes of both the players themselves, and also the watching world. It’s even in the name, ‘The Championships’; such a name makes it self-evident that it, and not others, is the gala event of the year.
A fan of the sport, perhaps even a fan of sport in general, will be watching from day one. For most, however, the championships build gradually; people will think, “Oh, Wimbledon’s on” when the tournament starts, then pick up with the tournament when it reaches the quarter-finals, or perhaps even later. Such a level of casual interest can only be a good thing for tennis, yet that interest stands more precariously than people realise.
It is no secret that support for tennis in the UK largely waxes and wanes alongside the fortunes of Andy Murray. At only 24, Murray will stay in and around the top of the sport for many years to come, but it is still unhealthy to depend so much on the one player for a nation’s interest in a such a major sport.
For it is a major sport, a global sport, one only surpassed by football in its ability to reach all four corners of the globe. Yet attitudes within the game, particularly in this country, are stunting its potential growth. Stories abound of children, potential converts to the game, turned away from clubs for being “too scruffy,” to name one example. In other countries, most notably France, participation in tennis is not dominated by class-based factors, and public courts are actually used. But the perception of the game in the UK in 2011 is that tennis is, and always has been, a game for the children of millionaires; thus it has to draw on a pool of talent so much less than it might otherwise be.
The LTA does little to help in this regard. Despite receiving a sizable chunk of money courtesy of their AEGON sponsorship, the Association unfortunately remains a labyrinthine bureaucracy to rival the very best, or perhaps worst. The prevailing opinion in the game is that the LTA will offer no help in engaging talent at all, only offering real financial assistance once they see a finished product. This catch-22 situation is worsened by rampant nepotism and what appears to be general incompetence, given that one mediocre player’s LTA backing (and we’re not even talking top 300 here) would be more than enough to set up a series of events across the country to give a massive boost to participation among the young. That it doesn’t happen is testament to the fact that the LTA don’t know their Whitney Houston; even then, it’s fairly logical that children are the future – who else would be?
The ineptitude of governing bodies aside, the game is under threat from many angles, not least due to its lopsidedness. The men’s game is enjoying an (actually legitimate) golden age, with Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray in or close to their respective primes. By contrast, it cannot be argued that the women’s game has been anything but suffering. The average person, were they to know any female players, would most probably name the Williams sisters, despite their both having not played for almost a season.
The women’s no. 1, Danish Caroline Wozniacki, has never won a grand slam, and has never looked like winning one, at least at the time of going to press. She may be wowing at Wimbledon even now, and no one disputes that it is something that she has spent her whole life attempting to reach. Nonetheless, the fact remains that she has been able to rise without trace to a status that ought ordinarily to demand a higher level of achievement. The Williams sisters are the favourites for this year’s title; it is their matches that command by far the most attention out of the women’s draw, Venus’s thriller against Kimiko Date-Krumm and Serena’s demolition of Maria Kirilienko in particular. If blind optimism is your way of thinking, you might view it as testament to their abilities, which are undoubted. However, that two women can dominate both in perception and in actuality after such a long layoff cannot be anything other than an indicator of a weak women’s game.
Maybe I’m too pessimistic. After all, we have Rafa, Roger, Novak and Andy. We have the champagne, the strawberries, the cream, and Sue Barker. But we need to remember that just because tennis can look good in the two-week window when people’s heads are turned towards it, it isn’t necessarily the healthy sport it deserves to be.
