What could be more typically British than Wimbledon? It’s that age-old institution that everyone in Britain loves, right? Wrong. Here’s just eight (of the many) reasons I despise Wimbledon.
The organisers
Wimbledon is organised by the LTA (formerly Lawn Tennis Association) and, let’s be honest, they’re an absolute shambles. Wimbledon is one of the highest profile sporting events certainly in the country and possibly in the world – it’s the sort of event that most sports governing bodies can only dream of. The problem is that the LTA seem unwilling or unable to do anything create a legacy for the sport.
Look at the facts: no British man has won the tournament since 1936, no woman since 1977, funding has been cut by £10million from Sport England because of declining participation and they’ve only produced one top 10 player, male or female, in a generation (Murray picked up his skills in Spain and Rusedski is Canadian).
Millions of kids will pick up a tennis racket over the next two weeks. Wimbledon will dominate TV ratings and newspaper column inches. The shop window will never look so appealing. And in three weeks, everything will go back into cold storage until 2014 because of the LTA’s criminal inability to do the basics of a sport governing body.
If the LTA was a horse, it would’ve been shot years ago.
The crowd
Oh man I could go on for hours about this. Check out the fans at Wimbledon next time you’re watching the TV… they’re the sort of people who think that walking to the shop to buy a pie and a donut constitutes a workout.
I don’t know if this is tennis worldwide or just in the UK, but Wimbledon is packed with middle-aged, middle-class, fat, probably inbred, people who do their best to try and impersonate royalty. What makes it worse is that most Americans think that all Brits are like this horrible Wimbledon stereotype. We’re not, honest. But all the fools at SW19 are.
There is also “the student”.
We all know which guy I’m talking about. There was one in every class in every school in every town in the world. It was the slightly chubby kid whose ‘thing’ at school was telling jokes and as he grew up he never quite left that behind.
Now he’s at university and mummy and daddy bought him a ticket to the men’s semi (no willy jokes please) where Andy Murray is playing. One too many G&Ts and he thinks he’s Billy Connolly. At the quiet moment just before an important serve, egged on by his mates Claude and Rupert, he jumps up and shouts “Come on Tim”, because he’s f**king hilarious.
If you find this guy, please lead him to the nearest lion’s den and push him inside.
Will there be a British winner?
For the sake of brevity, the answer is no. There’s more chance of Alex Ferguson popping up as the next Liverpool manager.
But that doesn’t stop the press writing endless pages about the prospects of every British player. Because of point 1, no one has ever heard of 95% of these players and they’re knocked out by the end of day 2. With the honourable exception of Andy Murray who valiantly drags this tedious media story out until the end of the second week.
Usually I’m right behind any Brit in a big tournament, but in the case of Wimbledon, I’d much rather see them dumped out early doors so the media hype can disappear pretty quickly.
The tiresome old joke
Andy Murray is Scottish. He was born in Dunblane, Scotland. But that also makes him British. There’s a ‘joke’ as old as the hills that says if Murray wins he’s British and when he loses he’s Scottish. I know, I can hear you all laughing now, it’s the funniest gag ever, right?
The next person I hear use this joke goes in the lion’s den before the student.
The rain
Wimbledon is in England. England is a tiny island in the north Atlantic. That fact means it tends to rain a lot. There’s no need to hate it though – the rain, the overcast weather and the occasional sunshine is what makes England as beautiful. You know the line about “England’s green and pleasant lands”? Well, they wouldn’t be that way without all the rain.
So get over it! If you want a tennis major where it doesn’t rain, move it to the UAE or the Sudan. If you want it in Wimbledon, shut up with the complaining about the weather. At least the rain has given the LTA a project to focus on – their new roof is amazing, it’s a shame they never develop any home-based players to play under it.
The cost
Sometimes stuff is expensive, there’s no getting away from that. But Wimbledon seems to pride itself on the fact that it charges a crazy amount for everything. Already the stories are out about final day tickets changing hands for £10,000 each! Let’s not concern ourselves too much with the idiots who pay that sort of money, but the LTA are “unconcerned” about the inflated price
They brag about the cost of strawberries and cream and shout from the roof tops about the amount of champagne sold. Has no one told them the country is broke?
The crazy prices have become a badge of honour for the organisers and a dinner-party-keeping-up-with-the-Joneses story for the well-heeled. You know what, I find it disgusting.
The event – every year we hear about how much the strawberries and cream cost. How much champagne is sold. How much it costs to buy a ticket. Its disgusting.
The media
The media jump on Wimbledon like a fat girl goes at cake. Newspapers that never write the word tennis suddenly devoted acres of their publication to Wimbledon, the BBC devotes a whole channel to the tournament for most of the fortnight and the phrase “the whole country is watching” becomes the most overused in the UK. It’s tiresome.
We’ve also got a puritanical streak to some of the right wing media too. You know the publications I mean, they hate immigrants, rage against the sexualisation of women and dislike anything that looks like change. Yet come Wimbledon fortnight, the hypocrisy is amazing. Greg Rusedski (the Canadian) is one of us – bye bye to the send them all back rhetoric. Women’s tennis is reduced to who looks best in a short skirt – hello women as sex objects. A new roof over centre court – glorious idea, why didn’t change happen years ago?
The sooner Wimbledon fortnight is done and dusted and the press goes back to writing about footballers, royalty and corrupt politicians the better.
The organisers, again
One of my earliest memories of tennis, when I *almost* started liking the sport, were of Andre Agassi revolutionising tennis. Here was a guy with a horrific mullet (although it was cool then), snazzy outfits and an A game to make the crowds drool doing for tennis what no one had ever done before – making it cool. Sure McEnroe, Borg and Connors had made tennis made stream and were very cool, but Agassi seemed to take it up another level. His merchandising deals, coloured clothes, pop star looks and swagger made him one of the most recognisable faces on the planet.
How did the LTA respond to this juggernaut coming to south west London? They told him he wouldn’t be allowed to play unless he conformed to their traditional, stuff and dull regulations. They have the most marketable sportsman in the world coming to dinner for two weeks and they use it to reinforce the view that they’re out of touch and not a place your average Joe can visit.
Personally, I’d have told them to f**k right off.
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