Diary – 31 January 2013

It’s a rum go, working in sport professionally. Your business is everybody else’s fun; their frivolity is your seriousness. Still, at least I was able to watch the Australian Open Final in Norfolk this year. Two years ago I watched the semi-final in a landside bar at Terminal Three. When Andy Murray won, I invented a new sport that combined sprinting with weightlifting, crossed the terminal without dropping any baggage, checked in, made the plane, just, and flew to Melbourne for the final. Murray didn’t win a set. Sportswriting can be a daft business. This year Novak Djokovic beat Murray in the Aussie Open final again, and it was a triumph of athleticism. Not touch, not artistry, not, heaven forefend, subtlety. It was all about running hard and hitting deep. That’s modern tennis for you. Frank would have hated it.

I owe Frank Keating. He showed me how to write about sport. Frank, who died last week aged 75, wrote for the Guardian and for years was sports columnist for The Spectator. Frank wrote journalism with a novelist’s freedom. When I started to write about sport for the Times I decided to write like Frank. Not in Frank’s style: that was too deeply idiosyncratic. It was also too dangerous: anyone with a less certain touch would have fallen into self-indulgence. There were plenty of legendary names around when Frank was at his best: and he was better than all of them. Better, because a larger man, with larger values.

I took over Frank’s column in the Speccie and did it for several years. Shortly after I stepped down, Frank stepped back and again showed me how it should be done. By this time, he had fallen out with modern sport.