Love Game: A History of Tennis, from Victorian Pastime to Global Phenomenon

Mephistopheles

By the 1980s McDonaldisation was spreading to the world of leisure and sports. Partly as the result of new technologies, tennis was being McDonaldised too.

(As a letter to the London Guardian put it, ‘is it any wonder the world is in such a mess when, instead of concentrating on wars and famines, God spends his time watching Wimbledon?’, but that raises questions beyond the scope of this book.)

‘the art of the racquet the most appropriate sport for the man of letters’.

To be authentic was to express your feelings.

Nor do sporting records necessarily reflect a hierarchy of greatness. Aesthetic and qualitative judgements enter just as much into sports as into music or painting. Rankings of the ‘greatest’ players based on how many tournaments, games, matches or anything else they won omit crucial qualities of beauty, excitement and creativity.

The Situationist writer, Guy Debord, whose book, The Society of the Spectacle, became the bible of the ‘événements’ in France in 1968, denounced the commoditisation of leisure and accused capitalism of colonising all aspects of life. To view the spectacle –in this case

After Ivanisevic revealed that part of his ‘lucky’ routine was to watch the same children’s programme, the Teletubbies, every morning, a cohort of supporters appeared at the All England Club dressed as the on-screen puppets.

The South of the northern imagination was, says Mary Blume, a land of the recovery of innocence and simplicity.