Dan Jones: Admit it, we Brits suck at tennis

 
Time's up: Liam Broady on hi way to defeat yesterday
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 01: Liam Broady of Great Britain towels down between games in his Gentlemens Singles Second Round match against David Goffin of Belgium during day three of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and C
Dan Jones2 July 2015

The sweat was puddling on my lower back as I walked up the hill from Wimbledon station to the All England Club this week.

Sorry if that puts you off your ice lolly.

I do like to rate and measure Wimbledons according to the dankness of my lower lumbar and, four days in, this year’s tournament is way out there. Unless you happen to be rubber-faced Nineties comedian and human water cannon Lee Evans, you’ve never know back perspiration like it.

Indeed, when it comes to the moisture-per-inch rating of the 20-odd square inches above my Calvins, this year’s tournament is breaking all records.

But, of course, that’s not all. Plenty of other things have changed at Wimbledon 2015, too. Some food and beverages are slightly more expensive. You can now do The Queue online.

And most dazzlingly of all, there were an uncommonly large number of British players playing in the second round of the men’s and ladies’ singles.

In fact, five — five! — people with a British passport had managed not to disgrace themselves by the start of play yesterday.

They included Jamie Ward, Liam Broady, Heather Watson and Aljaz Bedene, who swells the Brit ranks by virtue of having quit being Slovenian more than three months ago.

Of the 10 Brits who entered the field in the first round, that’s not a bad return, even if our second-round numbers are dwarfed by nations who actually produce decent tennis players by design, rather than fluke or foreign recruitment. I am thinking here of the Spaniards (nine singles players in the second round), Australians (nine), French (11) and Americans (12), among others.

But never mind that lot. It is the best part of a decade (2006 was the last time) since so many home players made it into the third and fourth days. Indeed, some Brits whose name is not ‘Andy Murray’ may even still be valiantly dodging defeat by the time you read this. Huzzah!

Andy Murray's decade at Wimbledon

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Naturally, there is not the slightest hope of any of these valiant young men and women (again, excepting Murray) making it into the second week. They are, to use a harsh but truthful phrase, making up the numbers.

But cheering home talent as they scramble to lift their game is one of the many irrational pleasures of Wimbledon.

For 50 weeks of the year virtually no one in this country could give the slightest sliver of a flying one about any other British tennis player except Murray. Come Wimbledon fortnight, however, everything changes.

Murray spoke very generously this week about his compatriots hanging around for an extra day or so in the draw: “What I do enjoy doing is being around the other British players: chatting to them, helping them, practising with them. It helps them and it is good for me, as well.”

And, of course, it would have been churlish for him to say otherwise. Not least because the more Grand Slam matches British players contest, the more experience those who are eligible to play Davis Cup tennis will accrue.

On the other hand, and without wishing to empty my bladder all over the great SW19 garden party, I do wonder if the culture of cheering these most insignificant British successes is ultimately counterproductive. The uncomfortable truth is that we are, as a nation, horrible at tennis. Awful. Admit it. We suck!

Considering the prominence of Britain across major world sports, the prestige and profile of Wimbledon, the funding that is available to elite sport, including tennis and the sheer love that exists among spectators, demonstrated year after year after year at Wimbledon, we should be producing more than one player per generation who is capable of reaching Grand Slam semi-finals and beyond.

But amid the squiffy, isn’t-it-all-marvellous-pass-us-the-Pimm’s atmosphere of the Championships, it is lauded as a small triumph to have squeaked five players into the 128 men and women who make up the second round. Culturally, you could ask whether we are really helping ourselves.

Or perhaps I’m just being over-critical. The sun is out. Wimbledon is baking like Beverly Hills. And one of the Brits — the Scottish one, not the Slovenian — is in with a shout of winning the whole thing. Maybe I’ll shut up now and get back to monitoring my own perspiration.

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