High life | 13 September 2018

A letter from a reader in South Africa mentions that the writer’s father insisted a white dinner jacket was permissible only in Palm Beach, Biarritz or on the Riviera. I agree and stand corrected, having worn one at the Duke of Beaufort’s bash in July. A heatwave is my excuse. England was a frying pan, I was planning to drink it up, and a new Anderson & Sheppard dinner jacket was hanging Circe-like in my closet. The letter also said that if the Duke is a rock star, as I described him in my July column, then all is forgiven.

My South African correspondent would have got a surprise had he been there. There I was, looking like a Grecian version of Fred Astaire, surrounded by terribly young people dressed as if they were going to a formal rave in the Congo. Things sure have changed since my new friend from South Africa was caught by his father going to a deb dance in Long Island wearing white and was forced to change to black.

And speaking of things changing, signalling by coaches in tennis is nothing new (not that it works). I remember how when I was on the circuit, coaching by friends — there were no pro coaches back then; only countries behind the Iron Curtain employed them — was a no-no. The Yugoslavs did it non-stop and a South American friend of mine, Eduardo Argon, playing a Serb at Wimbledon, told the Serb coach Josip Palada time and again to stop it. What the ghastly Mouratoglou was signalling to Serena, however, was quite important. None of the pundits got it. He wasn’t telling her to go to the net, but to play the centre theory: hit it back deep and in the middle of the court, thus cutting down Naomi’s angles.