Get Her Off the Pitch! How Sport Took Over My Life

  Tennis was glad to see Agassi back on form, but hadn’t it been caught that way before? Well, here is one of the great strengths of sports journalism (and of sports fanhood in general, actually): while the memory for facts and figures may be fierce, foolproof and astonishing, the scars from even quite deep emotional wounds melt away instantly in the presence of the tiniest little flame of hope. Thus, Agassi was welcomed back to Wimbledon and seeded fourth as if nothing had happened. In the Daily Telegraph, the veteran tennis writer John Parsons was thrilled to bits when Agassi won the French Open in the month before Wimbledon. Without him on the scene, ‘the game had lost its attractiveness’, he wrote. Sampras was interestingly quoted as saying, ‘I don’t know where he’s been.’ Steve Bierley in the Guardian was equally generous, equally pleased for Agassi’s historic win in Paris, which made him the first man to win all four Grand Slam titles on three different surfaces: grass, clay and hardcourt. ‘The pity is that Agassi…has wasted so much of his career - one year on, one year off - and what might have been one of the great on-court rivalries with Sampras fizzled out almost before it began.’

  I am putting off a description of the match itself, partly because I wasn’t there, but partly because I know it is beyond me. I’m so sorry I didn’t mention this earlier, but describing tennis in such a way that it is recreated in the mind of my reader is something I absolutely can’t do, despite taking loads of notes and paying proper attention and everything. If you don’t believe me, here is a taste of the 1999 Wimbledon final between Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras - one of the great matches of my lifetime. ‘Ace’, I write, next to the score, 15-0. You can really see that, can’t you? ‘Baseline rally.’ ‘Ag lobs; S smashes.’ ‘Cross-court b’hand ret from Samp - v shallow angle.’ When I write these daft things down, I do so in the belief that they will later transport me to a specific memory, that they will trigger some mysterious ‘replay’ mechanism in my head; but, well, I actually wrote these yesterday, while watching the match on tape, and I’m quite sure they will conjure up quite as much in the mind of the cat currently asleep on top of my printer as they do in mine. ‘At net, with bounce’ I see here, in my record of the seventh game of the first set, served by Sampras. Good grief. Skipping ahead I find, ‘Volley, leap, smash’, ‘F’hand winner down line’, ‘Great half-volley!!’, and (I think I do remember this one), ‘Let cord (NO APOLOGY).’

  Luckily, I have also taken notes of what the bbc commentators said as they watched this match - stuff about how Sampras, in the first six games, hit more baseline winners than Agassi (which must have been demoralising), and how Sampras served ‘three boomers in a row’. This is the best Sampras has played this summer, says John Barratt. Agassi is fighting; he’s playing brilliantly. He has even improved his first-serve percentage. But Sampras has responded by raising his own game to unprecedented heights. He is now playing ‘unbelievable tennis’ and is ‘in the zone’. The commentators point out that when Agassi serves down the middle, he stands a better chance of winning the point - but then Sampras notices, too, and does something about it. This is ‘near faultless tennis from Sampras’, they say, as he takes the second set. ‘There’s not a hope of Agassi breaking back,’ they say in the third. And as Sampras wins with an ace (on a second serve) to gain his sixth Wimbledon title, they declare him, happily, ‘the greatest grass court player of all time’.

  Of course it was Sampras’s day. And of course he won. In the years of their ‘rivalry’, the overall outcome was Sampras 20: Agassi 14, but when they met in Grand Slam finals, the ratio changed markedly. They played six of these in total, and Sampras won them all except the 1995 Australian Open - when it was quite clear to everyone that the hospitalisation of his coach Tim Gullikson had hit him very hard. Agassi said after that match that Pete’s courage had been inspiring. ‘He’s a class act,’ he said. ‘I think he’s shown these past couple of weeks why he is No 1 in the world.’ But Agassi’s determination to give Sampras a great game at Wimbledon in 1999 was quite classy, too. His new, new, new, new, new, new attitude was starting to be apparent. He was getting serious. On court, he had always been quick, but he was now quite alarmingly impatient to get on with it, serving (‘Whack!’) with minimum ceremony (‘Whack!’), as if he had a car on a meter outside (‘Whack! Whack!’). Just as he had always taken the ball disconcertingly early, now he was playing matches in the same way, not waiting for the normal number of breaths between points; catching everyone off-guard and bulldozing the game, not necessarily to his own advantage.

  What Andre Agassi did, eventually, was try to turn his back on entertainment. For the next seven years, he stuck with grim determination to the bat-and-ball stuff. In some ways, this was quite sad; like watching Tigger being pitilessly de-bounced. But the alternative was unthinkable, obviously: it was being beaten by David Lloyd’s mum. And the more seriously he took the tennis - and the balder he got - the more respectful the press were: he was playing the game, at last. In the past, he’d had various interesting exchanges with the press, which (as is the way of these things) he could never live down. Once, at Wimbledon, he was asked whether he knew his shorts were transparent, and he enjoyably riposted, ‘No, but obviously you are.’ In Peru, as a very young man, he asked, ‘What’s an Inca?’ At a joint press conference with Jimmy Connors in 1993, a reporter reminded them both of a stupid remark Agassi had made about beating Connors years before, and he blew up: ‘I knew one of you jerks would mention that. I was 18 and thrown into an environment. Let’s put your life under a magnifying glass.’ (As it happens, there was no need to get defensive on this matter, as Connors had already publicly, and hilariously, got his own back on Agassi by saying, ‘I enjoy playing guys who could be my children. Maybe he’s one of them. I spent a lot of time in Vegas.’)

  When Agassi retired from Wimbledon in 2006, I watched it on TV, and wept a bit. When he retired, for good, at the US Open on September 3, I was on holiday with friends on Cape Cod, paying no attention to sport any more - and only vaguely aware that the tournament was on. But on the day of his last ever match (against a low-ranked Benjamin Becker, in the third round) a spooky, tiny, vestigial bit of sports writer triggered the laboured train of thoughts, ‘US Open…hang on…Agassi . . . retired from Wimbledon…hang on…retired from Wimbledon …this could mean…hang on…what day is this…I think I heard he beat Baghdatis, so that would mean he’s still…hang on…I wonder if I should…would anyone mind…’ - and finally I thought ‘Oh sod it’ and put the TV on, and by amazing luck I caught the whole thing. It was a weird afternoon. From time to time, I would urge my uninterested friends to watch it with me: ‘This could be history, you know. If he loses, this is it. No more Andre!’ But this wasn’t the sort of history they cared about, and besides, they had kayaks to row and bikes to ride (which is the point of being on Cape Cod, after all).

  Of course, he lost that day. And he made a farewell speech designed to wring the heart, thanking the crowd for their support down the years. Arguably, it was the love of the crowd that had fatally undermined Agassi’s career, distracting him from his main purpose; but, luckily for him, he was never going to see it that way. His speech at Flushing Meadow - in the context of a sensational ovation that went on for half an hour, with constant close-ups of that little tear-stained face with those deep brown puppydog eyes - was admittedly a bit sick-making, even for me, but it was exactly how you would have wanted it all to end, with this heart-felt tribute to the fans. ‘The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. And over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty.’ Oh, Andre! I sniffed. I never deserted you! I mean, I did sort-of lose track a bit latterly, but I was always yours, you know that. Was it really 21 years, though? Didn’t you turn pro in 1986? That makes it more like 20 years, surely? ‘You have pulled for me on court and also in life,’ he went on. And that was certainly true. I had pulled like mad for Andre. Without stint. At great personal expenditure of emotional energy. Drained, I was, sometim
es. Drained.’ You have willed me to succeed sometimes even in my lowest moments.’ Yes, I have. Although to be fair you made that necessary a bit too often, didn’t you, with all that tanking and stuff ?

  But there was no point resisting this thing. It was going to get everybody in the end. Oh Andre! ‘You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams,’ Oh, [sniff ], that’s too much, really, stop it, ‘reach for my dreams’, stop it. ‘Over the last 21 years, I have found you’ - Sob! - ‘and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life.’

  Afterwards, he was asked what he would remember about his last tournament. Would it be the amazingly tough second-round victory over Marcos Baghdatis (seeded eight)? Well, would it fanny. No, it would be the applause he would remember - ‘the applause from the fans, the applause from my peers. That was [sic] the greatest memories I’ve ever had, memories I’ll keep for ever.’ Pete Sampras would never have said that, would he? He would never have thanked the fans for their support, or told them they had inspired him. If he even heard the applause of the people whose money made the whole shebang possible, he considered it completely irrelevant to what he was doing. When it came to Sampras’s own time to retire, he didn’t even make an occasion of it. He won the 2002 US Open (against Andre), then said no, he wasn’t retiring yet, wasn’t retiring yet, oh no, might play next month, no definite plans at all to retire - until finally the penny dropped the following spring that he’d retired already without mentioning it. Agassi was a great player of tennis, but he had to work twice as hard as Sampras to get the world to see him as a sportsman, just because he loved the applause so much - applause that is essential, but must never be acknowledged as such. ‘Do you have any questions for us?’ someone asked at that final press conference. And he said, ‘Are you guys really going to miss me or are you just acting like that?’ At which he got his last - and most hard-won ever - standing ovation.

  Golf and the Basic Misogyny of Sport

  The scene is a bunch of sports writers, who are all men, and who are all my friends. We are gathered to cover the Open (golf ) at Royal Birkdale in July 2008, we’re in a pub in Southport, and I am happier than I’ve been in ages. In this company I am able to forget all my everyday cares, and even to stop fretting about the play I should be writing. Most relaxing of all, there is no pressure on me to be entertaining, because these blokes are self-evidently a great deal more entertaining than I am. Bliss. The fact that I’m a woman, and the oldest person present, with an unflattering haircut and a regrettable reputation for grammatical correctness, seems not to be a matter for concern; for this I am genuinely grateful. So the night is going well, and will continue to do so, and I hate to bring this up really, because it makes me feel like a bastard. But at one point, one of these good guys decides to tell a joke about a man chatting up a woman in a nightclub. And the joke goes like this.

  ‘Here,’ he says to her, in a low voice. ‘Can I smell your fanny?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ she says.

  ‘Must be your feet then,’ the man ripostes.

  Now, I can appreciate this as a clever joke; but unfortunately, I can also see it (damn, damn, damn) as incredibly offensive. It is now some years since I gave up the sports writing game as a full-time profession, but the casual telling of this misogynist joke on this pleasant night is a vivid reminder of the sort of unprovoked stab-to-the-vitals that I used to endure all the bloody time with these men. What I most resent is the out-of-the-blue etiquette crisis it presents me with: quick, quick, what are you going to do? You can’t just pretend you didn’t hear! Or…can you? Oh Lynne, surely not. You’re not really going to pretend you didn’t hear? Well, sadly, yes, I am, because it’s all I can manage. And so, while the others laugh, I gather to my face a faraway sort of expression, intended to convey curse-my-bad-luck-I-missed-your-punchline-but-look-everyone-else-is-enjoying-it. The idea that anyone’s attention can wander before the end of a three-line joke isn’t strictly plausible, I know; the idea that anyone can be struck stone deaf so inconveniently outside the world of a biblical story isn’t likely, either. But pretending that a tragic combination of these two highly unlikely things has just happened to me has worked in the past, and it gets me through another sticky situation now - although I regret this unfortunate phrase, obviously, as soon as I have written it.

  My main true feeling is shock; but it’s a shock I know I must absorb with minimum fuss. Storming out of the bar is not an option. A political dissection of the joke is not to be recommended. Saying ‘Ladies present’ (even with heavy irony) would ensure no one ever spoke to me again. There is, in fact, no way out. The price of being a woman in a man’s world is that, when you are treated as an honorary man, you can’t complain that you aren’t one. You can’t have it both ways. If you are walking alone and scared down a dark street in a foreign city after a riotous football crowd has only partially dispersed, you can’t say, ‘I’m a woman. I shouldn’t be in this position.’ If your hotel is disgusting and full of leering salesmen talking loudly about their sexual conquests, you are bound to think, petulantly, ‘Would my bosses want their wives or daughters to be exposed to stuff like this?’ but you still cannot resort to special pleading. And if someone tells a joke that revolves around the stink of a woman’s vagina, your main reaction should, in fact, be gratitude. After all, you are being credited (albeit mistakenly) with an all-forgiving sense of humour. And do you really think ‘fanny’ is the good old English term your friend usually uses when he tells this story? Good grief, woman. Can’t you see that this chap is gallantly attempting to spare your feelings?

  If you don’t want to read about this gender stuff, believe me, I wish I didn’t have to write about it either, but it’s rather unavoidable in the circumstances. First of all, I should mention that I am not the only woman ever to write about sport (or, indeed, the only women to enter a male-dominated world), so please don’t assume that I think I am. But I can’t speak for other women sports writers, because they were (and still are) doing the job properly, competing directly with the men in terms of knowledge and expertise, and I was always meant to be a kind of novelty act, dancing on the sidelines, playing the part of the Martian sending a postcard home, which weakened my position in significant ways. I remember a senior sports writer expressing to me his total bafflement at my value to the coverage of the Ryder Cup at Valderrama in 1997; and he wasn’t being unkind, he was truly confused. Out on the crowded course, on one of the practice days, I had purchased a rather spiffing golf periscope, and had devoted a couple of paragraphs to the joy of being able to watch the fairway action, by way of cunningly-aligned angled mirrors, even when your view was blocked by a lot of big Americans in baseball caps. I also loved the idea that you could spend all day saying, ‘Up, periscope’ and ‘Dive, dive, dive’ without having to worry about that notorious submarine-captain hazard of getting your thumbs trapped in the handles. The office had so enjoyed this little flight of fancy that they demanded a picture to go with it, so our photographer took a shot of me holding my periscope - although the picture didn’t make much sense, quite frankly, as I wasn’t standing behind a crowd of tall people watching golf; I was standing in open ground. Anyway, no one believes this story about the pained senior sports writer, but I swear it’s true. ‘I mean, that periscope sort of thing,’ he said to me, with a look of misery. ‘That goes right over my head.’

  The way I see it now, I was in a classic double-bind from the moment I said ‘Yes, please’ to this amazing job. On the one hand, having always resented being categorised as a woman, I adored the idea of doing something that women didn’t normally do. What better way to escape the constraints? What better way to transgress? I was always uneasy about the women-only Orange Prize for fiction. It makes me fume that there’s still a programme on the radio called, without irony, Woman’s Hour, as if the other 23 belong by rights to someone else. By the same token, it used to drive me nuts that the Guardian had a ‘woman’s page’. I can’t stand
it that every woman in the world is supposed to be more interested in shoes and hair products than in the causes of the First World War. I once sat glumly on a panel of ‘women humorists’ and just stared at the floor, squirming, while the others wisecracked about the war between the sexes, and the uselessness of men, because I didn’t think anything they said was funny, and I didn’t understand any of the questions. When I wrote a series of half-hour radio monologues for men (I’d already done a series for women), I was completely horrified by the kind of thing newspapers wanted to commission from me. The assumption was that I had devoted months of my life not to creating good stories and arresting characters (played by brilliant actors), but to lobbing insults at the natural enemies of all womankind.

  One interviewer actually asked, in an email, ‘Did you speak to any men?’ - and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Did she think men’s mental and emotional workings were opaque to the rest of us? Hadn’t she noticed that their voices and concerns were quite well represented in the culture? Was I supposed to say to my milkman in the morning, ‘Look, you’ve got the appropriate chromosomes, so you’ll probably understand this character better than I do, even though I invented his biography, his story, his voice, his range of emotions, the dilemma he’s facing, and every single one of his attitudes.’ Did you speak to any men? I remember I looked at this question for a long time. Was this person confusing ‘men’ with ‘unicorns’, perhaps? Did she think men were some shy, skittering, mythical species you only ever saw out of the corner of your eye? I felt like saying, ‘Well, I dug a trap in the garden to see if it was true that men existed, and I have to report that, actually, none fell in.’