TENNIS:Jon Swift
PERHAPS one of the better things about ageing – and there aren’t that many – is that you can, given the opportunity, alter the rules to suit.
Certainly this looks the case with the draw for the up-coming MTN Champions Tournament at Sandton Square – done in Washington and not locally, the organisers hasten to say.
Fortuitously, or so it would seem, the four top seeds – in order, Jose-Luis Clerc, Johan Kriek, John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg – slot into those exact positions in the draw and all the seeds also have a bye into the second round of singles play.
This, you must understand, is not a grouse. The draw would certainly have suffered severely if McEnroe was ousted by Clerc in the first round and Borg had to pack his bags after going down to Kriek on the opening day.
It couldn’t have worked out better the way it is, and who can carp at the rigging of the order of play? Certainly no one who has been champing at the bit to grab a sight of some of the living legends of world tennis.
And that is not overstating the case. Tickets have become as scarce as rocking- horse manure, forcing the organisers to squeeze in an extra 176 seats for each day’s play at the novel outdoor venue rapidly taking shape in the very heart of kugel country. Even then, most of those have already been snapped up.
But if there is a ticket available for the first two days – and that would seem the best chance for the average fan – it is worth trying for.
On the first day, Borg teams up with Guillermo Vilas against Kriek and John Fleming in the opening doubles during the afternoon session in a match teeming with possibilities.
The following day offers the intriguing prospect of Yannick Noah against the big- serving man from Lookout Mountain, Roscoe Tanner, in the afternoon session, and Fleming against the artistic Vilas in the evening.
The Vilas of yesteryear had an almost poetic flow to his big topspin game – and, on the more prosaic side, those who saw it can have hardly forgotten his fight-back from match point down against New Zealander Onny Parun to win the old Clows Classic at Ellis Park.
So forgive the men in Washington a little chicanery. The tennis is, after all, the main event, not the way names come out of an upturned hat.
I, for one, can hardly wait to see some of these stars again. Perhaps ageing isn’t really that bad after all.