Music of the Day: A. Ray Fuller, Free Spirit

While munching on this morning’s bowl of Special-K, I was watching the replay of the 1978 women’s final match at Wimbledon between Chris Evert (who lost) and Martina Navratilova and I was struck by a couple of things.

Most notable was the absolute quiet of the match—no grunting, no squealing, no shrieking during the points. None! Just shot-making, running, hitting, retrieving, putting away volleys, and knocking off winners. It sounded just like a tennis match, not a boxing match between heavyweights.

The second most notable thing was the speed of the points, games, and the match itself—not the speed at which the ball traveled, which compared to today’s tennis was pedestrian. The players today, both women and men, hit the ball so much harder, with so much more power, but the play today is so much slower. Actually, I should say that it take so much more time between points—the players dawdle, and towel off, and adjust their hair, and their clothes, and their earrings, and they take little bouncy-steps, and adjust their strings, and then they start the point. It takes for-freakin’-ever.

Right after the Evert-Navratilova match, the 2000 Wimbledon final between Pete Sampras and Pat Rafter was replayed on the tube. No grunting. No tugging at one’s pants before every point, no constant yanking on one’s socks or the re-tying of one’s shoes. And, most importantly, before the serve Sampras bounces the ball once and starts his swing; Rafter bounces the ball twice and starts his swing. Some of today’s players bounce the ball 15 or 20 twenty times before starting the service motion and, of course, now almost everyone grunts or makes a loud exhalation during every groundstroke or service or volley.

Eight years down the road from the Sampras-Rafter final, the pace and weight of shot might be faster and heavier, but the quality of the play isn’t necessarily better and certainly today’s game is noisier and slower. I wrote about this before in this fine space, way back in January of 2007, but all that really means is that I am still, pun intended, disgruntled about this. . . .

On the positive side, I spent about an hour on the court this afternoon against my toughest opponent, the Ball Machine; despite the 95 degree heat, it felt good to mash a few over the net and I even managed to hit the machine five or six times--once well enough that the ball got wedged in the opening where the rotors spin to spit the ball out, causing the machine to grind to a halt. Take that, technology!

AJ

TO LIVE IN FREEDOM’S LIGHT IS THE RIGHT OF MANKIND.