TV loves tennis

The Wimbledon tennis begins sharp at 2 p.m. Monday and, as has often been the case, competes with a haughtily oblivious lack of concern against the football World Cup in Germany. The tennis will make for far better telly, and see if I’m not right a fortnight today when what Wimbers still refers to as ‘the gentlemen’s singles final’ will serve as afternoon overture to the evening’s clamorous soccer climax in Berlin. I find it hard to believe now that some years ago when the two championships coincided I had to fly back and forth to cover the pick of the matches in the so incongruently different games.
Other times, assigned only to Wimbledon, with Grub Street mates I enjoyed infuriating the battalions of earnest US tennis-writers with a surreptitious blanket switching of the television sets in their foreign press room from the tennis to the footer. We’d stifle our sniggers as the Yanks went potty with rage.