Wimbledon! Bliss. Two weeks of strawberries, cream and Tim Henman getting dumped on from a great height. I’ve been trying to understand “Tiger’s” appeal to those madwomen who stand on Henman Hill with their ageing boy’s name smeared across their bodies and can only compare it to the impulse behind a semi-autobiographical book that was a smash hit in Germany a few years back.
Translating it roughly as In Search of the Impotent Man, its heroine admitted to herself that she wanted a companion but she didn’t want sex — so off she went, in search of Mr Softee. Of course Tim is probably 100 per cent he-man, sex-wise, but isn’t there a case for saying that his on-court performance fulfils the same sort of function? He’s the pin-up boy for rather tepid women who want a love-object — but don’t want one who anybody might fight them for, or who might excite them too much.
Then there’s the emergence of Andrew Murray, the 18-year-old anti-Tim who looks as much like a character from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting as a tennis player is ever going to, and whose Scots knowhow eerily reflects the way that his countrymen have taken over the British Government. A British man last won Wimbledon in 1936 — imagine if it took a Scotsman to win it for Britain again!
Those of us who are of a non-sporting “bent”, think to ourselves behind a smirk “Ooo — get away from me, you frigging freaks!” With the word “freaks”, I democratically include both the players of any sport and those who watch it. And in this parade of grotesques, it’s hard to know who is the greater buffoon; the sportsperson or the gurning fool who watches his antics.
At least the performer is being paid for his prancing — what of the characters who willingly part with money to watch a fellow human imitating an animal, be it by chasing a ball, jumping high or running as fast as he can? And he’s not even wearing an animal costume, which might as least make it tolerably cute.
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In fact, is there a case for saying that all sport is a sort of high-octane autism? And, perhaps, that those whose cash pays the wages that encourage human beings to develop their brawn instead of their brains are colluding in the crushing of the human spirit, like rather irresponsible cheerleaders?
Sport justifies its mindlessness by pretending that being good at kicking a pig bladder about can elevate a man to superhuman status. But sportsmen are less, not more, than human, in that the thing that makes us human above all — the brain — is purposely overlooked in favour of animal stamina and speed. The Ancient Greek idea that a healthy body and a healthy mind went hand in hand has taken something of a battering in recent years as sports stars have replaced pop stars as the fame-hogs most likely to go nuts/off the rails/native in a big way.
Not a week passes without yet another rape or beating of a woman by a ball-kicking goon (boxing is a sport where men beat up men, while football is a sport where men beat up women).
When footballers are not attacking women, they are having panic attacks — the previously unguessed-at ability of footers to break down at the toss of a coin still has the ability to surprise the casual observer. Whether it was Tony “Addicted” Adams getting so out of it on booze that he wet the bed, Gazza and his mental health problems, Stan Collymore’s violent depression or the never-ending tale of woe that makes up what surely must be the closing act of the life of George Best, you do start to think that the stronger and speedier and better the body, the weaker the rest of a man.
Whatever, something has gone badly wrong with a group of people who, intellectuals once fondly imagined, were Natural Man, untroubled by thought or neuroses. Being paid too much is the usual explanation, but I think it far more likely that sportsmen these days are uneasy about the idea that they are being trained, judged and valued as animals, as stock, rather than as human beings.
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Tennis players are not as apparently mixed-up as footballers — the brief day in the sun of the coke-sniffing Eighties’ playboys swapping baselines for basslines in Studio 54 is done and dusted — but to a lesser extent they too don’t appear to be all there. I can’t be the only feminist who, on hearing Tatum O’Neal’s claims about her ex-husband John McEnroe’s temper, experienced a real chill of shame as I thought of all the times my equally feminist friends and I had cooed and ahhed over his tantrums and hissy fits with fans, opponents and judges — and then imagined if all that rage was aimed at only you, behind closed doors. It would be vile.
And then, from a sublime player, if not person, to a ridiculous one on both counts — the ceaselessly deluded Tim Henman, who can actually say with a straight face: “I’ve still got my best Wimbledon in me”, before nearly losing in the first round and exiting in the second.
But despite believing that sport is sad, I am not one of those irritating female eunuchs who moans about “all the nasty sport on the telly!” I don’t even mind when they move Corrie! On the contrary, as with phenomena as diverse as the wearing of socks with sandals or Islamofascism, it gives me a warm glow of happiness; “I’m not like those people over there, praise the Lord!”
The investment we make in sport is a sign of how dismayed we are with our lives; this has nothing to do with worldly ideas of “success”, as many “successful” people are disappointed with their lives and many “unsuccessful” people thoroughly happy with theirs. For me, sport provides the opposite; it holds up yet another example of a thing I don’t need/want/have time for.
It’s the sporting equivalent of the luxury of buying Time Out every so often to remind myself of all the galleries/comedy clubs/theatres I don’t have to go to. My self-esteem, always buoyant, becomes positively stratospheric during major sporting events, as I bask in the glow of my flagrant, fragrant superiority; and golly, isn’t Tiger Tim making that easy this year! Here’s hoping that your Wimbledon is turning out even half as nice as mine is.
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julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk