Martina’s back and her huge army of fans go to Eastbourne to lay out the welcome mat
Veronica Lee
Eastbourne is a funny old place. Famous for being the south of England’s favourite retirement town, where you can smell the formaldehyde rolling in off the sea, it’s also slap bang in the middle of a college network that means that for several months of the year it’s crammed with students. And for one week every June, it’s also full of lesbians.
They are lured by Europe’s oldest women- only tennis tournament, this year graced by the old lady herself, Martina Navratilova, back to play a few more doubles tournaments with South Africa’s Mariaan de Swardt before she finally hangs up her racket.
Tickets sales jumped by 20% when Navratilova announced she was playing Eastbourne. It’s not just her, of course, although her presence in the game and her annual outing at the event as preparation for her beloved Wimbledon is what first marked this event as a dyke’s delight. Despite frantic efforts by Eastbourne’s organisers to sell this as a “family event”, those lesbians will keep on coming, leading to a wonderfully British incongruity of women with blue rinses sitting happily alongside those sporting flat-tops.
But while it’s obvious to anybody who visits Eastbourne – a good third of the week’s 40E000 paying customers appear to be gay – neither the organisers nor the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) will acknowledge this is where lesbians come out to play. “That’s not the sort of thing which we would comment on,” says the WTA. “Not something I know about, understand or would like to,” says tournament director George Hendon.
He may have a Queen Victoria-like ignorance of these things but Navratilova does not, and the wincing by officials outside the press room is almost audible as she refers quite happily to her lesbian fans. “If I don’t have my fans here, then I don’t know where I have them,” she says. “I love Eastbourne crowds – you have the old people and the youngsters, the families – and the women, of course.”
Lesbians may not be welcomed with open arms at Eastbourne, but it’s all very different in Palm Springs, where the Dinah Shore golf tournament, held in March every year, falls over itself to attract them. What began as just another date on the women’s pro golf tour has become the place for lesbians to take a spring vacation.
All the large hotels offer packages that sell out months in advance. The weekend is party central, with poolside parties and barbecues, wet T-shirt competitions, all- night discos with go-go dancers, designed to get you the girl of your dreams while you part with money for yet more beer and yet more parties. So much so, in fact, that some organisers sell it under the rubric “Oh and there’s golf too”.
It’s a huge cattle market, really, and far from the tired old misogynistic images of unattractive lesbians, the Palm Springs weekend is all about the body beautiful. In fact, there’s so much expensive jewellery and make-up in sight that one American television documentary dubbed it “The invasion of the long- haired lesbians.” Sadly a similar film about Eastbourne would be titled “The invasion of the ghastly haircuts”.
The hotels and travel agents are happy to attract gays, but the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), like the WTA, pretend they don’t exist. And while the Palm Springs chamber of commerce even takes out advertisements in the gay press inviting every lesbian in the United States to the Dinah Shore tournament, staid old Eastbourne Council remains mute on the subject.
Well, they can’t really entice the crowds with Californian sun – Eastbourne’s a bloody blowy place at the best of times. As Navratilova said drily about being back: “It’s nice to see the English weather doesn’t change,” when her match was taken off during rainy squalls. And as for post-tennis entertainment – there’s the Buccaneer pub on the seafront, and a disco on Friday and Saturday nights and that’s it.
Perhaps it’s because British lesbians aren’t as fun-loving or adventurous as their American sisters; but my hopes rise when a group from south London tell me of a wild night at last year’s Friday-night disco. “Val got spiked,” her friend says. What, someone spiked her drink with a narcotic? “No, she fell over on to someone’s stiletto heel.” Ah well, I’m sure it was traumatic at the time.
But Eastbourne tennis isn’t all lesbians; what about the blue-rinse brigade? I ask one septuagenarian couple who live locally and come every year if they knew that it attracted a lot of lesbians. “Funny you should say that, but we noticed it too,” says the husband as if letting me into a secret. “But then again, they’re everywhere these days, aren’t they?” says his wife. No, they aren’t bothered – “I was in the WRACS during the war” – and it’s as they would expect, as “some of the players are too, you know”.
Hendon, 21 years in the job for an event that has been going for 25, seems equally unaware of its fan base. “This is a family event,” he says, unconvincingly. “Yes there are other fans too, and they are welcome. We live in a free society where various groups can, shall we say, do their own thing. I think that’s right, as long as they don’t disturb or annoy other people by their behaviour.”
He doesn’t specify what “behaviour”, but I’ll hazard a guess that brazen hand- holding would be the least of it. Not all lesbians are quiet social workers out for an innocent day’s fun with friends– for there is an equivalent of the pervy vicar who touches up schoolgirls in the courtside crush at Wimbledon.
Dotted around Eastbourne you will see women training huge camera lenses on the courts. Keen tennis fans looking for that great action shot? I hasten to say that most probably are, but as one WTA official says: “It’s a real problem. We know they’re here to get knicker shots, not just of the players, which is bad enough, but of the ballgirls as well. But what can we do?”
The long-lens crowd are usually the ones who pester players outside locker rooms and at their hotels. A manager at the Cavendish, where many of the players and officials reside for the week, says staff are told to approach anybody who is lounging for too long in the lounge (if they’re old it might be rigor mortis, after all). How do they tell who is a potential tennis stalker? “Er, well, you sort of know,” he says, caught between his service- industry decorum and his manly honesty. So I help him. “Comfortable shoes and a bad haircut?”
“That’s it,” he says with relief. “It’s just that some players have been targeted in the past. It’s not so bad now, though, because I think there’s a younger crowd who are out, so they identify less with players who may or may not be gay.”
And for older fans, that was perhaps much of Eastbourne’s attraction. Times have changed: being gay is almost de rigueur in some circles and now, when only two of the top 20 players are lesbian, the frisson of is-she- isn’t-she? has gone – it’s not that private, heavily codified game that people play any more.
So if Eastbourne fades, where will the lesbians fans turn their attention? As the WTA sighs with relief, so the LPGA will throw up its hands in horror, as golf, as in the US, will be where the discerning lesbian goes for sporting action. Liz from south London explains: “So many young lesbians have taken up golf that it was inevitable that the professional game would start attracting a few followers.” Ros, a 25-year-old from Brighton, concurs. “Eastbourne after Martina retired from singles was never the same. I’m here this week solely because of her. Golf is where it’s at from now on.”
And certainly “See you at the golf!” was the common goodbye being shouted as Eastbourne shut up shop for another year. Roll on the British Open.