



Lament for a single backhander: the art in tennis has been lost


Ronald Millar

The game is not the same.

Art Larsen, and his single backhander, at work.

Art Larsen, and his single backhander, at work.

There's a block of tennis courts just behind the Point Lonsdale back beach.

With the summer lingering, and the Open not yet a distant memory, you'd imagine that at least a few kids would be out there flogging balls and dreaming of contracts. They can't all be in the surf.

We used to win. Now that we can't find winners, the young are finding alternatives. But perhaps they don't care for the old-fashioned look of post-modern tennis, with its rallies prolonged like those more languid baseline exchanges in the '30s; when the only time out between games was for strawberries and cream, not for opening a casualty clearing station for blisters or psychological crises.

Tennis is now a cruder game than it should be, and it has spawned cruder responses from crowds that seem more like celebrity-event groupies than tennis enthusiasts.

The single-handed backhand is like Gothic style: elegantly produced and powerful, a thing of aesthetic charm. Roger Federer, fading a little, can still produce backhands like that; Justine Henin could, and now doesn't.

Instead, most of the global tennis caravan has been coached relentlessly from kiddy-training camp into heavily-overspun double-handed Spanish clubbing from the baseline, using racquets made from some byproduct of the space program that give no time to do anything much, let alone to put a volley away.

Until now, it has seemed that the classic single-hander (it's creeping back) would be a nostalgic relic, like long cream pants or black-and-white archives about the halcyon days of really modern tennis that began with Jack Kramer and carried on with all those later Australian champions, some of whom happily were still in the stands last week for Federer, who seems like an end-of-the-line modern artist.

Technology forces players to look ugly now instead of beautiful. Coloured gear won't do it.

John McEnroe, now most suitably an art gallery owner, drifted around the court, a mobile blend of sacred and profane art. Stefan Edberg and Pete Sampras were modern artists as well.

But Bjorn Borg, the first of the post-modernists, paved the way for top spin slugathons; so now the slow court surfaces and new racquets nail most players boringly to the baseline.

Still, even the mundane double-hander has had, and still has, its exquisite moments. The great John Bromwich had two forehands, one of them a wobbly double-hander.

And Geoff Brown, only 57 kilograms, equipped with a bullet serve and a bog-standard wooden racquet, had a double-handed bomb that took him to a Wimbledon final before he ran out of steam in the fifth. He was an estate agent. There may be no estate agents now among even minor players on the circuit.

The reasons for a lack of more varied and attractive tennis are both technical and financial. Grass is uncommercial, though Wimbledon has somehow managed to keep it.

On those fast and skiddy grass courts, you picked the ball off your shoes (this is easier with a single-handed backhand) instead of playing it around your ears as everyone has to do now.

Anybody who could serve well came to the net at once and either volleyed for a winner or copped a passing shot. Fewer long rallies, more fast reflex action, more smashes and lobs, instant excitement and no time for protracted Hawk-Eye replays.

Now, the few natural grasscourt serve-and-volley players must get into interminable rallies on synthetic stuff painted blue. Made with high-tech weaponry and the right grip, a fizzing top spun ball is hard to volley.

The best Australians once could and did win on anything: boards, ant-heap gravel, converted ice-rinks and boxing stadiums, melting asphalt; but Europe has caught up and gone past, and Australia is scrambling to find clay courts.

Since Boris Becker and Pat Cash famously hurled themselves around the net to win Wimbledon, such desperate close-up stuff is rare. Instead, we have extended forehand attrition, stoically endured by spectators who may never have seen tennis at its subtle and athletic best, and who eventually react in frustration like footy crowds.

That's why organisers are always at the mercy of sponsors (which genius dreamed up the black socks look this year and the universal buttercup yellow?), rely heavily on television, put up with the bizarre activity of tribal groups, accept saturation ads, and welcome the fake theatre of a major show of racquet destruction or some tirade by a miffed celebrity.

But puffed-up celebrity is no substitute for the true tennis mavericks, of whom now there are few among our earnest professionals. Perhaps the money is just too big for eccentricity to flourish.

I miss the American Art (Tappy) Larsen, his mind on loftier things as he ambled neurotically around Kooyong between points until he found a white line he could talk to at some length.

The fans always forgave him; he had a great backhand.

Ronald Millar is a painter, critic and lapsed tennis player.

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