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

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.

Club du Lys in Paris.

Mephistopheles

To be authentic was to express your feelings.

(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.)

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.

So, while a performance of transcendent music is something deeper than ‘entertainment’, tennis is ultimately darker than entertainment, containing within itself an inherent contradiction and thus continually in thrall to frustration and paranoia.

The European Union, dominated by Germany and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, united with the International Monetary Fund to insist on harsh measures to stem the debt problems and stagnation afflicting Europe. German sociologist Ulrich Beck saw this as an expression of long-term tendencies in German culture: ‘Suffering purifies. The road throu

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.