wimbledon 2008

I am so happy. Wimbledon starts today. I love Wimbledon. I love tennis. As a child I would spend literally hours batting a ball against the wall of our boiler house. I lost so many tennis balls on the flat roof that my brother invented a ball retrieval system to help me out – true brotherly love.

I wasn’t bad at tennis when I was a kid. In fact I like to believe that if I’d kept it up I could have been pretty good. But I didn’t – and I’m not. I’m not bad at putting the ball where I want it to go – it’s the running to the other side of the court to reach the return that I haven’t quite figured out.

At my last school I was working with my boss one day. I can’t remember what we were talking about as we worked but I do remember saying that I sometimes wished I was Roger Federer. “Sometimes I wish you were too.” She replied. Obviously she hadn’t thought it through – if I was the best tennis player in the world I would hardly have been spending my Tuesday afternoon computerising her pupil action plans. Then what would she have done? – huh? huh?

Wimbledon fortnight is one of my favourite times of the year. Along with the milk cup it is one of the very few things that my father and I bond over. During this fortnight we can often be seen slumped in armchairs in the small hours watching highlights of some obscure mixed doubles match. I remember the joint sense of lose we felt when Gabriella Sabatini announced her retirement. A tragic day in the Campbell household indeed.

It’s just a shame that the Brits are producing so few world class players. It seems we can only manage one a generation at the moment. Of course it’s nice that the whole country unites behind Andy Murray (well, except me – I still think he’s a whingeing teenager) but it would be even better if the country was split by a world class rivalry. What life would be like if we had our very own british version of Connors-McEnroe.

Dreams, only Dreams. In fact it doesn’t look like improving much any time soon. At the moment Tim Henman is ranked as the 6th best player in Britain. Our 6th best player is a retired player who claims to have picked up a racket only a handful of times this year! Hardly a glowing assessment of men’s tennis in the UK. There is some talk that things are better in the women’s game, that there are large numbers of talented players moving up through the ranks – I hope so, I really do. In the meantime my ex-boss and I will have to watch the extraordinary Mr Federer do his thing.