Three days to go and Wimbledon

 Three days to go to Wimbledon

The punnets of strawberries are ready to be eaten, the glasses of Pimms nicely chilled and everybody at SW19 seems to be ready, waiting and prepared for the most famous, prestigious and high profile of tennis tournaments. Middle England is agog with anticipation. The rest of Britain can hardly believe it's that time of the year again. Just when we must have thought we'd lost track of time, the end of June is now blooming, viruses have now gone almost completely, we're all in the pinkest of health and sport is glowing. 

Here in Blighty we love this time of the year because everything seems to be just right. The country is emerging from the most chronic slump and although there may be some dodgy economic issues we can still find time in our day to celebrate our great heritage, our sporting national treasure and you must know what's happening in three days time. It's been fairly well publicised but there's a very real awareness of something really exciting on the horizon. It comes around every year. We become deeply and emotionally involved in its sense of spectacle, its perennial stateliness and that quintessential air of Britishness. 

Wimbledon is the one tennis tournament when summer opens its curtains, blinks in the early morning sunlight and then gets on the business with entertaining us, startling us and boosting flagging spirits. Above all it reminds us why the summer game of tennis in England is still so highly revered by those who wouldn't normally think of picking up a tennis racket and heading off to your local park. The cynics will insist that this is perhaps the only time that very thought will occur to us and we should know better.

So for two weeks in the calendar year we dig out our graphite rackets, dust down the strings on the racket, tighten them for a couple of seconds and then descend on our local tennis courts. We somehow feel obliged to play tennis because everybody else is so why can't we? We descend on badly neglected courts with drooping nets that probably last saw service when Ken Rosewall was a lad. But we relish these moments since we can convince ourselves that our swinging, booming serve bears an uncanny resemblance to Rafal Nadal and besides nobody frightens us. Even Wimbledon legends have their faults and shortcomings.

We unzip our Slazenger case, drop those familiar yellow balls onto that immaculately manicured grass, inspect the tramlines, engage in some light hearted squats, stretch our arms with an agonised grimace because of the usual aches and pains and then we go for it. We shake hands with our opponent or doubles opponent, spin a coin and serve at the end where towering trees become the dominant horticultural feature of the day. 

Then it's our turn to bask in the spotlight. There are no adoring crowds, no hysterical fans who shriek at the tops of our voices in the hope of providing much needed encouragement and for the first time this year  no bottles of Robinsons fruit juice to re-hydrate ourselves when the going gets particularly tough. There are no referees sitting in chairs that nearly touch the blue summer sky and there are no cries of petulance from Jimmy Connors or the inimitable John McEnroe.

But we will miss both Connors and McEnroe because they were colourful characters, clowns according to some, lovable mavericks, anti Establishment, non conformists and just outrageous. They were shocking in the eyes of traditionalists but just magical, mesmeric, compulsive watching and a dream to watch. So we hold our collective breaths, go through the motions when our emotions are at their most sensitive and then just applaud thunderously because we know greatness when we see it. 

I will be remembering my lovely and late mum. She passed away in February last year and the memories are still fresh in the mind. Come Wimbledon time, she would regularly park herself in our garden with a small TV, ready to acknowledge the exquisite tennis on offer. Rather like the rest of Britain she would become infatuated with the stars, the remarkable all round games of Connors and Mcenroe. But there was one man who captured my mum's heart for what must have been seemed an eternity. 

Bjorn Borg, a phenomenal record breaking Grand Slam winner extraordinaire, won five successive Wimbledons and was just untouchable, unplayable, almost in a class of his own. He would quietly stroll towards  the baseline on Centre Court and every year would give the same royal command performance. The hair would be slicked back with a hairband, the face totally concentrated on the task at hand and not a bead of sweat to be seen. The Swedish genius would proceed to unravel a whole panoply of gloriously powerful first serves, unbelievable athleticism, stunning stamina and throughout remained the personification of cool, sangfroid, composure, imperturbability at all times and not a hint of nerves. 

My late mum loved Wimbledon even if it was tennis for just a fortnight. She didn't have to time for the other Grand Slam tournaments around the world. For my mum Wimbledon was the equivalent of a summer punctuation mark when everything stopped for tennis. She was in awe of the players, their temper tantrums, their irritation, their complaints, their dissatisfactions with the state of the grass, the disturbances from the crowd and the endless arguments with the umpires, the general frisson of excitement and the pleasure the tournament must have given her while watching those cliff hanging matches. 

In one year she would make the most astonishing observation. Vijay Armritraj, an Indian all court player who once appeared in a Bond move, moved my mum to a very pertinent remark. During breaks in any of Amritraj's matches, she would notice that he was wearing a cross which would always be kissed for good luck. Mortally offended she would voice her profound disapproval at something that she thought was sacrilege  She couldn't forgive him for what appeared to be a classic case of a sportsman or woman asking for divine intervention.

Then at roughly the same time a gentleman from Romania would behave in quite the most ludicrous manner because he thought he could get away with it. Ilie Nastase, though was hilarious, silly, comical, an infuriating nuisance at times but classically proportioned. Nastase was born to play tennis and always treated the idolatrous crowds to tennis of sumptuous quality. Nastase had the necessary rocket for his first serve and then indulged himself in the most fluid movments across the back of the baseline, whipping forehand returns that whistled past opponents, back hands that rolled effortlessly from his wrists and angled volleys that screamed diagonally across Centre Court as if they were second nature.

But Nastase was different. He had to be because Wimbledon expected it of him. In fact they thought this was Nastase being who he'd always been. Before serving on one occasion, he would grab a policeman's hat, place it on his head and play to the gallery. The kids loved it, the adults probably thought he was trying to re-capture his childhood but Nastase just wanted to be the main act at the comedy club. The Romanian with that thick black hair and the brash manner would laugh uncontrollably at everything and everybody around him.

And so it is that Wimbledon returns properly with cheering crowds, people who yell out the name of the player they want to win and then there's the tennis. The atmosphere is at full electric voltage, loud barking and whooping from every seat and then a whole variety of pleas and exhortations. The voices can be heard in Kentish Town, Camden, Manor House, the West End of London, Kensington, Hampstead and Edgware. Wimbledon loves to be cosmopolitan, all encompassing, reaching out to the global tennis community. 

We all know now that Wimbledon is the only grass court on the Grand Slam circuit but every year at the end of June it just keeps appearing like the brightest of red roses on your dining room table. It is timeless, immutably brilliant, polite, gracious, extremely well mannered now but even its sense of humour knows no bounds. It welcomes all comers from all four corners of the world and is unashamedly inclusive. It tolerates the idiosyncrasies of the eccentrics and laughs in the face of adversity. When the covers used to come on in the rain we could always rely on Cliff Richard to delve into his back catalogue of classics.

Now though Wimbledon has its very own retractable roof so when it does pour down with rain, matches would still go ahead unaffected even though the game itself didn't sound or look quite the same. In the old days some of the game's most unforgettable encounters would be played deep into the late evening. Then, with the shadows lengthening and the sun sinking gracefully, the game would take on a most unique dimension. The fading light would only serve to reinforce the game's essential theatre. A light would appear in one of the corporate boxes and suddenly tennis would adopt another language. 

You could always understand the game's finer nuances but the increasing darkness would transform the game into another kind of contest. And then it was finally agreed that the match would have to be stopped because nobody could see anything and the ball had been lost in the murk. Now though there are indoor lights and Centre Court roofs, ivy festooned walls that have always been there and the trusty electronic scoreboard with tiers of seats above and around them.

And then with Borg and Connors at their most pulsating best and a five set thriller about to reach match point young and old voices alike puncture the intensity of it all with shrill calls and good natured name calling. Then Borg or Connors would slowly slump to their knees, looking to the skies, covering their eyes in sheer disbelief, sweat pouring off their foreheads in rivers and then there would arrive the sudden realisation that immortality had been achieved. Borg seemed to win the Wimbledon trophy so many times that we began to run out of fingers.

So it is that this year I will think of my wonderful mum in the summer sun, drinking up the whole mystical aura that has always been a part of Wimbledon. You will have your special memories of Wimbledon past and you'll never forget those. But on Monday SW19 London will become the spiritual home of one of tennis's most celebrated of social events. Sadly, the likes of Dan Maskell on TV and Max Robertson on the radio will not be among us but the baselines and tramlines will be. Anybody for strawberries and cream and a jug of Pimms. Oh absolutely.