Spectator Sport

13 June 2009

Roger the Great

Then along comes Wimbledon. As tournament hosts, the All England Club has in its gift a number of wild cards it can put the way of anyone it fancies. Obscure Brits always do well out of the arrangement, and this is Chris’s big moment.

He gets lucky in round one when he comes up against a young Kazakh who is already exhausted from battling his way through four rounds of qualifying while spending his nights in the back of a camper van parked in a driveway in Kingston. The Kazakh swears at the umpire a lot (in Kazakh) but Chris keeps his cool and he’s through to the second round. This time he’s even luckier. He’s up against another Brit, with a similar story to tell. This one’s called Mark. Chris beats Mark in front of a Court 13 crowd that doesn’t know which one to cheer, and now he’s in round three. The press is going wild and Chris’s girlfriend, who is called Leah and turns out to be rather pretty, is pictured on the front of the Daily Mail.

Chris’s opponent is the No. 19 seed, an Argentinian who is ten times more talented than Chris but a bit iffy on grass. Chris plays a blinder. He gets to match point but dumps an easy volley straight in the net. By now the No. Two court is full to bursting, spectators are almost fainting with excitement, and the BBC delays the start of Gardeners’ World to stay with the tennis. Eventually, of course, Chris loses (8-6 in the fifth), but he’s had the entire nation in his thrall and shown that he’s got a pretty decent backhand.

But within a couple of days everyone’s forgotten about him, and a couple of years later he retires for a lucrative job in sports sponsorship. I wonder who this year’s Chris will be?