Taki Taki

I’d pick the Vero Beach retirement home for old ladies over Annabel’s

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issue 09 October 2021

Around 20 or so years ago I had a point for match point on a perfect grass court at Fort Belvedere. We’d been playing for close to two hours. I remember hitting a topspin backhand down the line, going to the net and seeing my ball just miss the tramline. I was perfectly positioned to call the ball out. My opponent, thinking I would approach with a crosscourt, was covering his backhand side. He called my ball in. ‘Ball was out,’ said I. ‘I saw it in and it was in,’ said Galen Weston, my host at the Fort and a very good tennis player. It verged on the parodic, the ensuing so-called argument about who was right. Galen prevailed, and I eventually won the match. He then lent me his best pony to stick and ball on his polo ground and play one against one. He won that one rather easily.

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