I do not like sport. That is the official line. I do not like playing it and I do not like watching it.
Lately, though, that has become less true. A few months ago I took up swimming on a regular basis (after staying in a hotel with a pool in Canada - oh how I love Canada.) I now go swimming up to four times a week, and have been taking lessons (we are currently working on my Butterfly.) I love the way swimming makes me feel, both physically and emotionally - it's a great way to get rid of stress, and I've been getting that endorphin high I've heard all about but never before experienced. When I was at school, there was no endorphin high. When I was at school, all exercise meant was pain, humiliation and embarrassment.
And now there is Wimbledon. I have watched sport before and even pretended to enjoy it. Football can be gripping, but only really if you care who wins. I've had some exciting nights cheering on Arsenal or France or even England, but there has always been long stretches of play when they were just kicking the ball around in the middle of the pitch and the only way I could figure out who was playing well or who was playing badly was by whether the person standing next to me looked happy or not.
Tennis, though, is different. You can know absolutely nothing about tennis and still be able to follow the game shot by shot, point by point, game by game, and know precisely who is playing well and who is playing badly down to the second. It's psychological, it's emotional, it's unbelievably intense. Also, and this is no small point, they keep the camera in one place so you can see exactly what is going on at all times. I have loved watching tennis as long as I can remember. Indeed one of my earliest memories is of watching McEnroe beat Borg in the Wimbledon final for the first time (1981: I was five). I watched Wimbledon religiously right through to the Sampras era, and then stopped. I'd love to say it was because ball and racquet technology meant that the game got too fast to enjoy, but actually it's because I got a job and couldn't follow the tournament in real time. (I don't like highlights; all the tension is lost.) Anyway, I forgot about tennis and lost track of the players.
Today, after Home and Away, I switched over the BBC2 just to see what was going on. Two and three quarter hours later, I was still glued to my seat, unable to even go to the loo for fear of missing a second of the phenomenal Ancic v Ferrer game. I had never heard of either of these players, but another great thing about tennis is that it can be so beautiful and athletically brilliant - as it was in this game - that it's perfectly easy to enjoy a good game without caring who wins. The winner, as they say, is tennis itself.
Well, I say that, but in practice, within thirty seconds of switching on any men's tennis game, I have always chosen the one I want to win, and it tends to be the one I'd most like to shag. Surely this is human nature. In this case, my heart, and less mentionable bits, went straight to Mario Ancic. God, he is lovely. Tall and thin, just the way I like them, with the most beautiful dark eyes. Not to mention the kind of muscle tone that suggests he could do about six hundred one-handed press-ups. I was completely smitten, and when it looked as though he might lose the fourth set and have to play to a fifth, I was absolutely beside myself. He did me proud, though, and won it in four.
About halfway through that last set, my best friend turned up to have dinner with me. Fortunately she soon became just as engrossed - and just as smitten - as I was. Anyway, about ten minutes after she got here, she turned to me and said: "He looks like that Doctor Who guy doesn't he?" (Not for nothing is she my best friend. She doesn't have a great memory for names, though.)
Well. I couldn't possibly comment. But commenting is what *you* do best:
I am left thinking: could a Croatian tennis-playing David Tennant who has a body suggesting six hundred one-handed press-ups be (gasp) an improvement on the original?
Heresy! Don't even consider it!
And yet I find myself inexorably drawn back to the tennis next week...
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