Peter Seddon - Tenniss Strangest Matches

Other titles in the STRANGEST series

Crickets Strangest Matches

Footballs Strangest Matches

Golfs Strangest Rounds

Kents Strangest Tales

Laws Strangest Cases

Londons Strangest Tales

Rugbys Strangest Matches

Runnings Strangest Tales

Shakespeares Strangest Tales

Motor Racings Strangest Races

Teachers Strangest Tales

Titles coming soon

Cyclings Strangest Tales

Fishings Strangest Tales

Horse Racings Strangest Tales

Sailings Strangest Tales

Extraordinary but true stories from over a century of tennis

PETER SEDDON

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.

(Sign above players entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon, taken from Rudyard Kiplings poem If.)

Admirers of lawn tennis have used many words to explain the games special appeal. Back in the nineteenth century it was a splendid and healthful pursuit, and it has since been variously described as graceful, exciting, beautiful, thrilling, athletic, pulsating, remarkable, unrivalled and awesome. Sometimes it is all of these, and more, at once.

There is another small adjective, too, which so often seems to creep into the annals of tennis literature. Were talking strange.

Selecting those matches and incidents that somehow depart from the norm has been a tremendously enjoyable task but inevitably a subjective one. I had to resist the temptation merely to cite great matches, of which there have been many, and instead have sought out incidents or representations of tennis which are remarkable in other ways.

As a result, tenniss strangest stories have many themes. There are tales of murder and suicide (One Shot After Another), interference from wildlife (A Sting in the Tail) and unusual playing techniques (Redls Special Service). There are others where weather proved the victor (Disruptive Diane), seemingly impossible comebacks (A Champagne Moment) and occasions when officials took centre stage (Dorothys Nightmare).

There are tales of tennis played in the most trying conditions (Arthur Keeps Cool), others where handicaps were entirely self-inflicted (Well Smashed, Sir!) and those which entered the record books for reasons of length rather than quality (The Rally from Hell!).

Other strange stories defy categorisation like the rather eccentric academic who turned gamesmanship into an art form to help him win against better opposition (Joads Gambit).

Umpires, doctors and streakers all get in on the act, as too do stockings, shorts and knickers along with aeroplanes and helicopters, squirrels and dogs, and a sundry collection of vicars.

And not forgetting the players, for it is they who are at the heart of all the action, their strong personalities and diverse characters, as well as their extraordinary ability, coming through time and again in Tenniss Strangest Matches.

The tales involve many different nationalities, reflecting the games worldwide appeal, and cover venues as diverse as Surbiton and Tallahassee, the Albert Hall and the Houston Astrodome. Naturally I have chosen many incidents from Wimbledon, the spiritual home of lawn tennis, but the United States is well represented, as too are France, Italy and Australia.

As for the timespan, the stories are evenly spread from 1877 to the present day, and I have also selected half a dozen or so from the era of Royal Tennis, the venerable ancestor of the lawn game. As an incidental result I hope that a reading of all the stories chronologically should give a potted history of the origins and development of tennis.

My research practice has been to return to original sources, in particular, contemporary newspaper accounts and reports from the specialist tennis press. I have steered clear of relying on players reminiscences as anything more than a pointer they play so many games in so many places that I quickly discovered their memories werent always as reliable as their forehands.

Among the many sources consulted and libraries visited I must extend special thanks to the Kenneth Ritchie Wimbledon Library at The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, whose collection of tennis literature is mind-boggling in its coverage and is made so readily accessible to researchers.

Special mention must go to Kate Ibbitson for taking time out of a very busy schedule to cast an eye over all the finished stories and make useful comments.

Finally, I would like to thank my editors Nicola Newman and Katie Hewett for embracing the idea of Tenniss Strangest Matches so enthusiastically and guiding it through to completion.

Peter Seddon

Derbyshire

James I of Scotland (13941437) loved nothing more than a game of Royal Tennis, venerable ancestor of the lawn tennis we know today. After all, the Scots had a great pedigree in the game, having played since the reign of Alexander III in the thirteenth century, even before this most healthy of pastimes was documented in England.

But, like every player before and since, James found that the balls had a life of their own and simply refused to go where he wanted them to. Now any wayward shot can be expensive, but no one in tennis history knows that better than James I, because for him it wasnt just the lost points or lost balls that cost him dear. It was something much more important than that!

It was his games at the Blackfriars Monastery in Perth that were especially troublesome. Those unruly balls would insist on finding their way into a small open sewage drain in the corner of his court.

Now were not talking a pressurised canister of four here. Were looking at handmade craftsman jobs, individually sewn in cloth or white leather, stuffed with dog hair or even the human stuff and shipped in from France subject to heavy import tax. Expensive was the word and, being a good Scotsman, James liked to watch the royal purse.

Contemporary accounts tell us that whane he playd at tenys the ballis he plaid with oft ranne yn at that fowle hole, so he maid to let stop it hard with stone. The sensible fellow had blocked up the troublesome drain.

When he wasnt playing tennis, James was reforming Scotland with a vengeance, keeping the turbulent Highlanders in order and making vigorous efforts to limit the power of the nobility. The nobs werent at all happy about this and swore vengeance.

On the night of 20 February 1437, a band of at least eight assassins led by Sir Robert Graham broke into the royal apartments at Blackfriars, slew a page, Walter Straton, on the staircase and approached the kings room, where he was in the company of the queen and some of her attendants.

The royal party sought to bar the door but a traitorous member of the court had removed the bolts. The king tried the windows but found them strongly barred. Seizing an iron poker from the fireplace he prised up a plank in the floor and lowered himself into thordure of the privay, the drain of the lavatory.

Although rather corpulent, he knew he could wriggle down the channel and escape through the flue into the tennis court. That is, until he remembered hed blocked it up just days before. Trapped in the stinking hole he waited until his pursuers had searched and left the room before asking the ladies to lower down sheets to pull him out.