5 minute read

When I think back to my childhood there are a couple of things that stick out. Renting videos and being obsessed with making sure they were rewound before you brought them back; clubbing together to buy 100 penny sweets but refusing to accept 10 ten-penny bags and their filler jellies and so eventually being barred from the newsagent – and Wimbledon.

I can remember whole summers from about 1986 to 1992 when everything stopped for the action on Centre Court. My best friend growing up was a member of a local tennis club and so, had what the rest of us on the road could only dream of – a metal tennis racket. We all had to make do with wooden ones. I imagine if I showed one to a pre-teen now they would think it was from 1890, not 1990. The thing about the wooden rackets though, was that if you hit it off the ground you didn’t care, the fancy metal ones got scraped, you couldn’t actually make mine any worse than it already was.

All my friends and I were obsessed with the tournament. We would watch matches in whatever house we were allowed in that afternoon and would run outside as soon as they were over to play on the road. You could be at match point and have to abandon ship because a car was coming down the hill and someone’s da was coming home.

It was all innocent fun until 1991 when I discovered Andre Agassi. It was set to be a normal summer, I had my racket at the ready, and then he walked onto the court and my little 13-year-old heart skipped a beat. I had had crushes before, River Phoenix’s name was written neatly on my homework journal with a love heart beside it and I had kissed a few boys at the youth club disco, but the summer of 1991 was the first time I felt lust – not that I could put a name on it then.

In the land before time, or at least the land without internet, researching the man of your dreams was a trickier business than it is now but I went at it like the future journalist I would become. I rescued the old newspapers from around the house and read a couple of very long, very dull articles about the ‘bad boy of tennis’. It turned out that he wasn’t brand new at all, he had just refused to play at Wimbledon because of its traditionalist ways and demands for all-white uniforms. One article was speculating on what he might wear when he made his first appearance. I had seen it, it was white, I was confused but that didn’t put a halt on my obsession.

Our TV in the early 90s didn’t have many stations but it did have Aertel which I searched for hours (mainly because it was so slow) for any mention of my new sporting boyfriend. It also had Eurosport which I gleefully discovered showed really old French Open tennis matches at weird times. They often featured AA, as he was known to me and my diary.

My love of Andre led to some very heated debates about him, Pete Sampras, and Goran Ivanisevic. I wasn’t a fan of Sampras’ long game. I would happily tell anyone who would listen that I found the rallies boring. I had opinions on Floridian tennis training camps, Jennifer Capriati’s future, and Monica Seles’ grunting. I admired Goran, right up until he beat my beloved Andre in 1992. After that, I couldn’t hear his name. I was very dramatic.

That flair for the dramatic was to be expected though. I went to multiple drama classes and was a dedicated ballet student. It was the tennis that was weird for me. But there it was, every summer for about six years. I would spend a month and a half perfecting an overarm serve and roaring about umpire calls until I would promptly forget about it for another 11 months. We had an imaginary net and our court was marked by the tar lines in between the road. We would stop the games on really warm days to pop the tar bubbles that would appear in the heat.

In 1991 Andre Agassi only made it to the quarter-finals, it was the man, rather than his game, that garnered all the attention. His hair was long and wild, his style dishevelled, his attitude completely at odds with the buttoned-up, starched collars at Centre Court. He was basically Pat Sharp with a racket. And I loved it. Wimbledon had everything – Princess Di in the crowd, drama on the court, and a heartthrob I could obsess over.

To this day I’ll stop each summer and watch tennis and talk form as balls are belted back and forward with a pace and style I tried to copy on a suburban Dublin road. I’ll eat strawberries and cream and see how many royals I can name in the photo of the crowd. I have had other favourites over the years - I liked Federer, I admired Nadal – but there’s only one champion that I ever rang Atlantic 252 for.

Game, Set & Swoon

5 minute read

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