Spectator Sport

First Serb

Like this journal’s esteemed High Life commentator, I too have been spending too much time watching the last fortnight’s Australian Tennis Open from Melbourne — but unlike my colleague I found it an absolute revelation, with potentially lethal levels of thrills, shocks, gut-wrenching excitement and great grace in victory and defeat. For most people in Britain, tennis tends to be something they think about over a couple of weeks in mid-summer. Damn shame, that. I was watching Roger Federer’s synapse-stunning third round victory over Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic a few days back — Federer won 10-8 in the fifth against Janko, who with his specs and beard looks like a geography lecturer at Warwick, but whose favourite reading is in fact Dostoevsky — when the commentators went over to veteran tennis sage Bud Collins. ‘Well, Roger may be the greatest player on earth,’ said Bud, ‘But he’s up against someone who wants to share that earth with him.