From previous posts, you may have read that I spent a lot of my time as a youth, playing tennis, and drinking, and sometimes playing tennis after drinking, which I don't recommend! So it naturally follows that when the great English Tennis Championship is on....I'm an enthusiastic viewer. Also it's hard to cheer for SVU (Special Victims Unit), and Animal Cops...and I suppose you can cheer for Cesar Milan "the Dog Whisperer"...but it always comes out with a Spanish accent, and then I can't let go of it!!
But cheering for tennis is almost as awesome as cheering for Canada, with one big exception...Canada was not the underdog!!!! I don't know why, but that is consistently my position....cheering for the underdog. I remember the first Wimbledon that I was actively cheering, and that was when Margaret Court played Yvonne Goolagong in the final, and I was certain that Evonne would win....she had to....her story and her struggle demanded it! I watched it with my grandmother, and she knitted while I wriggled around trying to be quiet but blurting out a cheer here and there. Granny didn't think that anyone would beat Margaret, and she didn't want me to be too disappointed when Evonne lost!!...But she didn't lose!!!! When the press interviewed her she said the cutest thing....she was worried about dancing with the male winner...and was going to cheer for the shorter boy...she being just above 4 feet herself...things sure have changed...whites are no longer whites (with the exception of Wimbledon) and the most provocative in this line is Serena Williams...did you see her recent "tennis" wear, which resembled a black lace corset with red accents!!! The noise at the Championships no longer comes from the spectators, but rather the players seem to be competing not only for scoring prowess, but also volume of yelps!!! The tennis racquet's are made out of something that NASA created, and if you serve at less than 100 mph, your game needs work!! The game no longer varies from baseline to net...but is played almost entirely 5 ft outside the baseline...probably because playing inside the line could result in massive injury!. My grandmother and I loved to watch tennis together, all the while her knitting needles clicking rapidly, but she never lowered her head ( I found that almost as engrossing as the tennis)...and I remember her saying emphatically that ..."they shouldn't allow aces...it's cheating!"....I wonder what she would say today....what do you think Granny?
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