Wimbledon 2day

I wrote about Wimbledon last year. In fact most of what I have been watching recently has felt a bit Groundhog Day - Episodes, Child Genius, W1A... They've already been covered by this blog. Nothing more to add.

Anyway, in last year's blog post I complained about the inanity of John Inverdale's highlights programme Today At Wimbledon. But now it has been replaced (nothing to do with me, I hasten to add) and I have seen Wimbledon 2day, I retract my criticism wholeheartedly. Because I hadn't seen nothing yet, it turns out.

Clare Balding is always bright and enthusiastic and keen to sound the expert, even if she does tend to shove her hands in people's faces. But she has been placed in an oversized Pimms tent covered with fake grass from a market stall and given a malfunctioning iPad that constantly distracts her with tweets. And she has been surrounded by a Top Gear meets Antiques Roadshow style audience on their feet. An audience who contribute NOTHING other than a bland, nervous "I am on camera, don't sneeze, it's hot, don't faint" smile and the odd stagestruck murmur of agreement. There are still the former player commentators (McEnroe, Navratilova, Bartoli, Henman etc) invited in for a chat, but even they seem diminished by this dumbing down and the distracting people in the background. The spotlight is no longer shining upon them as it would have done in a purpose built TV studio. And they have to sit clutching giant microphones. They are also being asked ridiculous questions about jokes and beards.

What there isn't a whole lot of is tennis, unless a British player happens to have won a match that day. Instead there is YouTube footage of toddlers having a meltdown by their paddling pool while being forced to wield a racquet in their back garden to fend off flying objects. I am not making this up. Now, Wimbledon has always made children play tennis in our back garden, and this is to be heartily encouraged, but we don't need to upload a video of it on to the Internet. Our kids might not be as cute as we think, for one thing.

Like many people, an evening highlights programme is the only tennis I get to see during Wimbledon. I may not be in an office all day, but I have my daughter with me all afternoon. (Last year her three hours of pre-school were in the afternoon so that gave me a bit of tennis time. Now they are in the morning.) As the weather is lovely (it's SUMMER, people  - stop moaning about the heatwave), I am not going to sit indoors and even begin to attempt to persuade her to watch a match on Centre Court. So I don't care what people are tweeting about the day to Clare Balding (especially if they aren't tennis experts). Lucky them, they've seen it already. Now it's my turn. Show me what I've missed. That's all I want.

The whole style of the programme just feels so wrong, so misjudged. Wimbledon is meant to be slightly stuffy, I think. Stuffiness is at the soul of the All England Club, like the be-blazered stewards and the strawberries and cream. There shouldn't be high fives or bad spelling. I don't care if the 2 is for BBC2, it doesn't belong in the word TODAY. Next they'll be shoving Sue Barker in a gin joint and changing the theme tune to a Kayne West** rap.

(** I only know who Kayne West is thanks to the subtitlers currently going viral for attempting to cover his Glastonbury set for a hard-of-hearing audience not allowed to see bad words. Please always feel free to tweet good things about subtitlers! But not inane nonsense about a tennis player's beard.)

Summer of Sport (Part 2)

So I did develop a flicker of interest in the footie when I was awarded Ivory Coast in our local veg box scheme's World Cup competition. Whenever your awarded country exits the tournament you get a prize, and the longer the team lasts, the higher the prize. Would Ivory Coast do well enough to win me a bottle of wine or a quiche? Or even go all the way and bag me a large barbecue meat box? Even if we don't own a barbecue? But no, a last-minute Greek penalty and they were sent home in the first round, just like England. But I get a Montezuma chocolate bar for their pains, so that'll do nicely, thank you, Riverford.

I've not been to Ivory Coast, needless to add.

The next event on the summer of sport's calendar is Wimbledon, now in its second week. Quite extraordinary to see a British male reigning champion kicking (or rather hitting) everything off on Centre Court on the opening day. Andy Murray described the experience with typical aplomb - (shrugging gruffly) -"Yeah, uh, it was nice."

Annoyingly John Inverdale is still allowed to present the highlights programme on BBC2 in the evenings, despite his comments about Marion Bartoli after she won the women's final last year. Thankfully John McEnroe usually shows up to say something worth listening to, before they slip back to showing us footage of silly moments to silly songs and talking about socks. But with a rare flurry of nights out recently, I haven't been able to indulge even in this inanity too often. However, the tennis is on screen as I write this, as Andy Murray is playing Dimitrov. An interesting encounter for a certain two tennis-loving Bulgarians I used to work with, I am sure. Things are not looking too good for Murray at the moment.

I have at least been to see the tennis live at Wimbledon. Not for a long time now, but it was firmly in my London calendar when I lived there. For the 18 months I lived in Earlsfield I was in walking distance of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Naturally, that is an irrelevance for 50 weeks of the year. Nonetheless when the tennis was on, it was great to be able to stroll across fields to Southfields tube rather than battle my way there on the District Line. And I could stop off for the finest, most delicate and beautiful curry of my life at the incredible Sarkhels (now, alas no more) on Replingham Road on the way home.

Most years I just turned up and queued, smuggling in my own strawberries and cans of Pimms to save money, but one year I was lucky enough to get tickets in the ballot for Centre Court on ladies quarter-final day. Unfortunately the weather wasn't particularly kind that year and - as it was before the roof was built - there were a lot of rain delays. However, as the ladies in the quarter final consisted mostly of the Williams sisters in their element, the matches were rattled through very quickly when they did get to play. And our seats were far enough up in the stadium that we had shelter through the downpours. Because hanging around on the outside courts does get a little tedious when rain stops play. It's extraordinary how long it takes to get things started up again even after just the briefest of showers.

It's all been rebuilt since, but a good place to go with a general grounds ticket used to be the standing area at the top of No 2 court. From there you were so high up that you could see not just the number 2 court but also several other outside court matches, as well as the scoreboards on Centre and No 1 Courts. (In the days before the giant screens on Henman Hill/Murray Mount, this was as close as you got to seeing anything of the biggest matches of the tournament.) You could also - if you kept turning round to look behind you - see various tennis stars go in and out of the competitors' area. Ivan Lendl and Stefan Edberg the first year I went.

One year I got stuck up there watching what I thought was the most boring match I had ever seen. Jonas Bjorkman slugging it out against some boring Swiss bloke in a headband. It was a never-ending five-set struggle that had not one but two rain delays. The tennis was totally uninspiring. I was on my feet for hours with little reward. We were all waiting for Serena to come on next. The boring Swiss bloke won in the end. No one had ever heard of him, but in his next match he went on to beat defending champion Pete Sampras. And then everyone suddenly sat up and took notice. His name, of course, was Roger Federer.

Some boring Swiss bloke in a headband

When I was a child, we used to play tennis with genuine Wimbledon tennis balls. As a student, my mother had worked there every summer in her vacation. Not as a ball girl (how I used to dream about being a Wimbledon ball girl, crouching down by the net and running to and fro!), but selling strawberries (so she claimed) to Harry Carpenter. The balls (still white in those days) were sold off cheap after matches (they had only been used for nine games after all) and were still going strong, if a little grey round the edges, in our back garden 15 years later.