What a well-behaved Wimbledon. Apart from a bit of racket-smashing (most of the ladies), low-level swearing (Nick Kyrgios), tantrums (Kyrgios), and egregious non-trying (Kyrgios again, of course) it has all gone pretty-smoothly. So whatever happened to top-class gamesmanship? The master of this, you may be surprised to learn, was the greatest British player of all, the three-times Wimbledon champion Fred Perry. With great natural charm and remarkable good looks, Perry —who was from humble origins — fitted effortlessly into the very upper-crust world of 1930s tennis. His sexual prowess was on an Olympic scale and he bagged some of the most-beautiful women in the world, from-Marlene Dietrich downwards. And few seemed to have a bad word for him.
His tricks for getting one up on his opponents included spinning for who served first by throwing his racket out ahead of him as he came on to court with his opponent, which he felt put him in charge of the situation, athletically leaping the net at the end to show he was fresh, and saying ‘Very clevah’ when his opponent played a good shot.
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