!Grass by Pete Bodo
Mornin', everyone. I always think of this last Sunday before the commencement of play at Wimbledon as the calm before the calm, because there isn't a more well-organized and orderly tournament than Wimbledon, which I've always put down at least partly to the grass.
Say what?
That's right. The grass. I'm a minor student of the psychology of grass, of green, if you will—or at least the idea of "green" before the noun was hijacked and turned into a ghastly label used with equal insolence by corporate interests and amateur as well as professional politicians. Thankfully, grass—the real stuff—remains what it always was: a major building block of life, conducive to contemplation when gazed upon, and always there endow us with a sense of well- being. I say that looking out a window beyond which red-winged blackbirds, finches and orioles are flitting and flickering in and out of the tall grass. In this case, hay, five feet tall.
Wimbledon grass is different, naturally. It's a kind of thoroughbred of grass, comparable to the way horses that bear the same designation are different from mustangs and plough horses. The grass courts at Wimbledon are pampered, meticulously groomed, leveled, closely-guarded, kept theoretically happy and content until they are used, and used hard, even if it's for a remarkable brief period.
You think life is tough when you've got Andy Roddick's dawgs pounding down on you ever time he temporarily lifts off to launch a big serve? Do you think, "poor grass" when Novak Djokovic violently drags that rubber-encased toe across the turf has he unwinds a forehand? Does grass feel the burn when Rafael Nadal lashes out and puts so much spin on a ball that you expect it burst into flames before it next touches the ground? **
I say save your compassion and pity for a more deserving spans of turf. Say, for example, what passes here in game-rich Andes for my "lawn," whose grasses are constantly under threat from onion-grass, dandelion, burdock, pancake thistle and wave-after-wave of flowering weeds that are as ephemeral as snowflakes but invariably show up every week to make their presence felt for a brief period. Not to mention the abuse inflicted by the chug-chugging lawn tractor/mower.
Lawn. The noun is useless in the country, where anything that doesn't have a bunch of trees growing on it is, more-or-less, "lawn." A well-tended hayfield is basically what every lawn wants to be when it grows up, although that no longer holds in the suburbs, where such robust, imperial ambitions have been bred out of grass. And Wimbledon, after all, is a suburb (of London), and a mighty fancy one at that. It's only fitting that the lawns you find there are among the most famous in the world, and have much better things to do than long to become hayfields, soccer pitches, or ersatz airstrips. They have the world champions of tennis to crown.
Despite the psychology of green, not all lawns are as reliable, friendly, and purpose-driven as those at Wimbledon. Note that in nearby Eastbourne, which is more like country than is London, the lawns acted up lately, conspiring with frenemys like rain and win to screw things up royally—and in a way that's impossible to imagine at Wimbledon, unless you're still nursing a grudge over the way Rafa and Roger had to battle deep into the gloaming on that fateful final evening in 2008.
Down in Eastbourne, local officials presumably got so sick and tired of the lousy weather (I have a solution to that problem: put a roof over the center court and it will never, ever rain again) that they insisted on finishing the men's final featuring Janko Tipsarevic and Andreas Seppi, the former a three-time loser in ATP finals hoping to bust the jinx, the latter a newcomer to the final match at the main-tour level. It didn't end well, and now Tisparevic is 0-4 in tour finals, and his ability to even hobble out onto those famous SW19 lawns come tomorrow is questionable.
Of course, that disaster wasn't a matter of grass behaving badly; rather, it was human beings succumbing to familiar temptations like impatience and a determination to get something done, even at the risk of not doing it right. It's funny, but tennis is a sport in which ambient conditions like wind or rain can play an outsized role, yet at the vast majority of tournaments it's utterly vulnerable to changing conditions, and a crowded calendar, business obligations and contracts are formidable obstacles to tournament promoters doing what the sensible farmer does when he looks up from the milking chores and sees thunderheads on the horizon.
"We'll mow hay tomorrow," he says with a shrug.
Anyway, it's a shame to have a dress rehearsal like the Eastbourne tournament go so wrong. But give Seppi credit for bagging his first ATP title, even if Tisparevic was hurt and had to retire. It was late enough in a competitive match to be chalked up as a good effort. And how about Marion Bartoli (my own dark horse pick to win Wimbledon), prevailing over Petra Kvitova? I'm fighting shy of Kvitova, less because of any doubt about her abilities than the mad rush of the pundits, who have through no fault of hers turned Kvitova into something like the overwhelming dark-horse favorite to win Wimbledon.
Slippery grass—and even the thoroughbred stuff at Wimbledon can get mighty snotty—can get truly dangerous, although it can also be an awful lot of fun. One of the most memorable tennis matches I ever saw was a clash between Kim Warwick and tour newcomer Jimmy Connors (that's how long ago it was!) at the Orange Lawn Tennis Club in suburban New Jersey (a tune-up for the U.S. Open, which was still played on grass at Forest Hills back then). The fellas played shortly after a brief thunderstorm, and they did so much slipping and sliding that I thought I was watching a summer edition of Ice Capades. It was great stuff, and I remember moments from it as if it happened yesterday.
I suppose you can say that the grass plays a large a role in determining the world champion of tennis (for to most of the world, that's the best way to describe the champion of Wimbledon), and you have to wonder what those lawns might say if they could speak ("Nothing feels better than Serena Williams falling on her bum on me. Yum!"). Who would be their most popular and beloved champion?
My guess would be Federer, mainly because of how lightly and easily he treads on the grass. Where others leave a footprint, The Mighty Fed produces something like a passing shadow. Where others pound divots, either with their clodhoppers or the angry swing of a racket, he glides with a light swish that barely bends the blades. I have a feeling that the lawns of Wimbledon must love Roger the way so many fans do, because he's so smooth, elegant, and moves with such light, self-assured ease; at times he's more like a dancer than a tennis player.
So who knows, maybe the grass will help him become champion again. It would only be fitting.