Spoiler alert: The title says it all. This started out as a post about sport in general, but I quickly realised that I will need more than one post to do justice to the subject, so this may well be the first of an occasional series. If the mere mention of the word sport induces in you a coma, I apologise. Feel free to leave. I look forward to seeing you next week.

For as long as I can remember, tennis was always one of my family’s favourite sports. My father z”l was a keen all-round sportsman, and introduced my brother Martin and I to tennis at a fairly young age. I knew almost immediately that this was my sport. The activity comes in short, intense bursts, with ample recovery time. Nobody comes crashing into you, barging you out of the way or hacking your legs out from under you. Tennis marries power and finesse, instinct and guile. It uses a ball that, when someone is firing it at you at speed, has the (for you) distinct advantage of not being made of solid cork covered in hard, stitched leather, like a cricket ball. Recreational tennis depends on you, and the player on the other side of the net, trusting each other to play fair, since each of you will usually be better placed to call the other’s shots in or out. The sport requires some equipment, which means that it comes with a body of specialized knowledge, and allows satisfyingly nerdy discussion of the relative merits of different makes of racquet and ball. At the same time, it is surprising how little you can make do with – see below.

By the age of eight or nine, I was hooked. This meant playing once or twice a week, for an hour, or two, or three, at a time, on the municipal courts in our local park. The park boasted about ten hardcourts, so there was usually at least one available. However, the quality of the different courts’ playing surfaces varied: from the recently refurbished (smooth, with crisp, white line markings) to the ridged and pock-marked. The word ‘fault’ is often heard on a tennis court, but seldom referring to something that resembles San Andreas. If I ever played a visitor on one of the worse courts, I enjoyed the advantage of knowing where to attempt to place the ball to maximise the chance of an uneven bounce, much like a slow bowler taking advantage of the fast bowlers’ footmarks.

Another feature of the more unkempt courts was that they had the odd tuft of weed sprouting in the cracks, which helped us imagine that we were playing on the hallowed lawns of our beloved Wimbledon.

Not that our imagination needed much help. In addition to the tennis described above, my friends and I also played hand-tennis every day after school. Using the existing markings (for netball, possibly?), we played with an old tennis ball, which we hit with our open palm. We had to imagine the net; we gave no quarter; but I remember no arguments, no John McEnroe You cannot be serious outbursts. There we would be, rain or shine, until we could no longer see the ball, playing in shirtsleeves, or jumpers (sweaters not having been adopted yet in England) or duffle coats (not many blogs can legitimately introduce duffle coats two weeks running, I bet).

In our minds, my best friend Peter and I were Pietrangeli and Sirola, the Italian doubles pair who won the French Championships in 1959, all grace and elegance. If you can stand in drizzle, wearing a duffle coat that, sodden, weighs twice what it did when it was dry, palming a half-bald tennis ball across a primary school playground, and feel as though you are gliding across the sun-baked clay of Roland Garros in the brightest of whites, then your imagination is at the peak of health.

I did actually get to play once on sun-baked clay. On a family holiday in Italy, Martin and I were woken ridiculously early (on reflection, it was probably 6:30) to play for an hour before breakfast, and before the sun was too high in the sky. Given the very long hours he worked, my father was not able to spend much time with us throughout the year, so this was a wonderful holiday, and that halcyon hour on the clay court was, in itself, enough to fuel another decade of fantasies.

Our tennis year naturally revolved around the Wimbledon fortnight – last week in June, first week in July. There was good BBC television coverage of the tournament as I was growing up. At first, although I enjoyed watching, I far preferred playing. At some point, and I wonder whether this is one measure of my move from childhood to adolescence, I preferred to stay home and watch an absorbing match, however inviting the weather was outside the window.

In our family, watching Wimbledon also meant, with very fortunate frequency, going to Wimbledon and watching live. Wimbledon tickets are allocated by a draw. The public are invited to apply to be included in the draw, and lucky winners are allocated at random a specific court and a specific day. My parents applied every year, and were, as I say, often lucky enough to be drawn. On one memorable occasion, when they had tickets for Centre Court on Finals Day, they generously gave the tickets to Martin and I.

We started early for the long tube journey from East to South London. I was armed with my binoculars, and I suspect Martin had his camera with him. We emerged from the depths of Southfields station to discover a dull and drizzly day. A short cab ride brought us to the ground. We settled in our seats nice and early, and spent the next four hours waiting for the weather to improve. I was able to watch the rain splashing on the covers in close-up, thanks to the binoculars and Martin was, presumably, able to photograph the pools of standing water. Eventually, we heard the dreaded announcement that play was abandoned for the day, and started our long trek back home. The icing on this particular poisoned cake was that the finals were postponed to the following Monday, and we both knew that there was no chance that our parents would agree to us taking a day off school.

However, I do have several happier memories of going to Wimbledon, and actually watching some tennis. The Championships operated a scheme (I’ve just checked, and they still do) whereby any ticketholders leaving the ground early were invited to leave their tickets in special postboxes placed around the grounds. (There were many suburban housewives who came to Wimbledon, but left early enough to be in time to have dinner on the table when their husbands arrived home from work.) These tickets were then collected, and, from mid-late afternoon, resold for a modest fee. All proceeds went, I believe, to the Lawn Tennis Association and were earmarked for affiliated charities. I have a memory of tickets being resold for half-a-crown; I see that the current price is 120 times that amount.

Several times, when the forecast promised good weather, Martin and I travelled to the championships straight from school, arriving around 5PM. On one memorable occasion, we were lucky enough to get Centre Court tickets, sitting high up in one corner of the court, It was men’s doubles semi-finals day, July, 1967.

In the previous round, an unseeded English pair, Peter Curtis and Graham Stiwell, had beaten the Number 1 seeds, John Newcombe and Tony Roche, 8-6 in the fifth set. They were now facing the Number 4 seeds, Roy Emerson and Ken Fletcher, for a place in the final. This was a match that had us on the edge of our seats from start to finish. You need to remember that this was in an era when the best players played all three events, so that the doubles events offered tennis every bit as high quality as the singles, and often at a more spectacular pace.

In the afternoon light, with shadows lengthening across the court, the match unfolded. The Australians won the first two sets 6-4, 8-6. The English then rallied to take two equally tight sets 6-4, 7-5. Would they be able to take the fifth to win a place in the final? Equally nervewracking was the question: Would the light remain good enough to complete the match that day. The prospect of our having to leave after the fourth and miss seeing the conclusion was awful. Of course, the prospect for the players of having to resume the following day must have also been very unattractive for them.

Fortunately, July in England provides some long, lingering evenings, and this was one of them. The fifth set was fought to a darkening but thrilling conclusion at 9-7. The only fly in the ointment was that it was 9-7 to the Australians (doubtless to the delight of at least two of my readers). At least we had the satisfaction of knowing later that they were beaten in the final by the South Africans Bob Hewitt and Frew McMillan.

Of course, tennis was a very different game then. 1967 was the last year before Wimbledon became open to professionals. Racquets were wooden, and, to prevent warping, we kept them in presses. The old-fashioned square press had a wingnut and bolt at each corner, each of which you had to loosen each time to remove the racquet. When this mechanism was replaced by a single metal bar which you pulled up to loosen the press instantly, we were stunned by the cutting-edge technology. The balls were white, not yellow. The racquets did not have the big heads they have now…and nor did the players. It was a gentler, less intense game, with no grunting and generally refined conduct, although, even before John McEnroe’s tantrums, Bob Hewitt was known to take offence at some umpiring decisions, and to plonk himself down, sit cross-legged on the court and refuse to move for a few minutes.

I have spent the last 50 years measuring each rising star – Newcombe, Borg, McEnroe, Connors (I always say that the difference between those two is that McEnroe hated losing and Connors loved winning), Sampras, Agassi, Federer, Nadal, Djokovic – against my gold standard – Rod Laver. Comparisons are, of course, in some sense meaningless. Each player is necessarily a product of his time, and shaped by specific equipment, playing surface, timetable and training parameters. I think each fan is to some extent similarly a product of his formative years.

However, Laver’s performance on the professional circuit in the six years between when he turned professional and when the grand slam tournaments became open to professionals, is sufficiently impressive to suggest that, had he not ‘lost’ those six years of opportunity, he would have won more major titles than any other player so far has. In addition, he changed the way the game was played, turning defensive shots into attacking ones. Before Laver, if you chased down a lob on your backhand, you threw up a lob in return. Laver’s wrist strength allowed him to play a topspin backhand drive cross-court or down the line, while running back. If I had to choose one player who gave me most pleasure to watch, it would definitely be either Laver or Federer, and I’m glad I don’t have to choose between them, but have been privileged to enjoy them both, and so many others.

Sadly, Tao hasn’t started playing tennis yet…but he was, coincidentally, involved in a sporting contest in failing light last week.