TENNIS: Frank Keating
THIS is the last Wimbledon for the evocative and singular No 1 Court. Architectural change is sometimes imperceptible, other times terminally dramatic. It will be the latter when the bulldozers grind in to ransack the Centre Court’s democratic and friendly old semi-detached neighbour as soon as the last doubles finals are over on July 7. By next June a swishly grand and modern new stadium court will begin business higher up the hill on the championship grounds.
So farewell, then, No 1 — though never exactly Numero uno — RIP, aged 72, forever fondly remembered.
The ghosts of No 1 may, of course, gambol and romp for all time — once any red-gilded midsummer sunset has dropped below the line of its steep-raked mountainous western terrace where the schoolgirls’ picnic parties would gather to munch and screech hurrahs.
Ghosts, sure, but No 1 was not strictly The Graveyard, which remains No 2 Court across the concourse, that unshaded, rectangular little microwave-oven whose boxed-in, undrying surface would cause nightmares for devoted groundsmen and cursing, departing seeds.
It was all encapsulated by that grand old All England head groundsman of a few decades back, Jack Yardley, who would refer to his various courts as he, she and it: “it” was always the contrary No 2; the opulent, regal glory of Centre Court was, of course, adoringly “she”; and No 1 was “he”.
And a masculine Colosseum it is — boldly wide- shouldered, zipping with pace and offering the freedom to live dangerously and trust to reflexes. Because of its spacious openness to the sunshine and prevailing winds, No 1 is the fastest serious grass court in the world.
If No 1 is indeed male, it is, structurally, downright English-eccentric male with knobs on: it looks as if it was built as an afterthought, and it was. One side is that seemingly sheer Matterhorn bank, the other just a shallow row of seats beneath the walkway clutter and bustle which encircles its posh neighbour.
No 1 is all iron girders and splintery woodwork, everything painted a cabbagey-green, like old Twickenham was: peeling but appealing.
The dear departed Twickenham was built in 1910 and No 1 Court is 14 years younger. It had been the tea- lawns and was opened, a year after No 2 Court, in 1924, the same summer that a simple form of seeding was tried and Centre Court competitors were first ordered by the committee to bow to Queen Mary in the Royal Box.
The People’s Palace of No 1 was never to have a Royal Box but it had two press-boxes, one in the dark rafters high behind the southern service-line and the other — my favourite — low down in the very front row. I was first there 33 summers ago, when the big German Bungert beat Emerson, the Australian top seed. I was working then for ITV, which had a forlorn stab at matching BBC coverage for a year or two, and was accompanied by one camera and a nice, mincingly camp floor-manager seconded from Drama, whose job was to relay scores back to our control hut on a primitive walkie-talkie.
The players did not seem to mind his noise but, when he persisted in calling every “love” score as “nil”, the umpire halted play and patiently explained tennis scoring.
On No 1 many have suffered much more embarrassment. If not the original graveyard, it has still hosted no end of upsets, near-upsets, turn-arounds, turmoils and unlikely triumphs. And the nobs on Centre Court have heard all about them, carried on the sou’westerlies to assail the main show-court like a tide battering a sea-wall.
But now the court where Nastase clowned and McEnroe raged is on “his” deathbed. One summer evening a century from now someone may stand where No 1 was and hear in the breeze the ghosts of Wimbledons Past. And they will wonder what sort of a place it was where people said: “Why can’t I call myself a disgrace to mankind?”