And Monet?
‘Dream partner,’ said Ibsen. ‘A genius.’
In what way?
‘In the way geniuses are,’ replied Ibsen.
But how do you know he’s a genius?
‘He looks as if he feels like a genius,’ said Ibsen.
Umpire Rodin, from France, hardly moved.
The World Tennis Organisation (WTO) announced the men’s and women’s seedings at an official lunch. Aside from the removal of a woman named Violet Trefusis following an incident involving a Mars bar, the occasion was said to have gone ‘very well indeed’. The seedings are:
MEN
1 Chekhov, 2 Yeats, 3 Eliot, 4 Einstein, 5 Joyce, 6 Conrad, 7 Picasso, 8 Tolstoy, 9 Pasternak, 10 Duchamp, 11 Paderewski, 12 van Gogh, 13 Freud, 14 Chaplin, 15 Puccini, 16 Nijinsky.
WOMEN
1 Earhart, 2 de Beauvoir, 3 Pavlova, 4 Bernhardt, 5 Pankhurst, 6 Stein, 7 Stephen-Woolf, 8 Garbo, 9 Christie, 10 Chanel, 11 Stopes, 12 Melba, 13 Montessori, 14 Mead, 15 Akhmatova, 16 Pickford.
There are no surprises among the men with world number 1 Tony Chekhov and Big Bill Yeats heading the list, which otherwise proceeds in accordance with current WTO computer rankings.
Why the women’s seedings are at odds with international rankings is not clear although some observers say their game is less predictable than the men’s.
‘I don’t think that’s the real story,’ said American Mary McCarthy. ‘The WTO doesn’t know what’s going on in women’s tennis. How the hell would they? They’re not interested.’
Suggestions that the seedings of the two French players, Simone de Beauvoir and Sarah Bernhardt (seeded 2 and 4), have more to do with currying favour with French television than with actual standings were rejected by organisers. ‘Absolute nonsense,’ an official retorted. ‘We looked at world rankings, past records and form on this surface.’
This does not explain top-seed American Amelia Earhart, whose best results have not been on any surface at all. Nor does it explain why world number 2 Virginia Stephen-Woolf is seeded 7, world number 1 Anna Pavlova is seeded 3, world number 5 Greta Garbo (Gustafsson) is seeded 8 and world number 6 Tallulah Bankhead is unseeded although, as she says, the tournament doesn’t start until Monday.
The US camp was rocked tonight when top junior Bill Burroughs, here with boy wonder Jerry Salinger to provide practice for the Americans, returned a positive swab following routine drug tests. His coach, Ernie Hemingway, was furious with his charge when reporters caught up with him. ‘I don’t know what went wrong,’ said Hemingway. ‘We were like father and son.’
‘It was never going to work,’ said Burroughs. ‘We were like father and son.’
Burroughs tested positive to every one of twelve banned substances and left this evening in disgrace but unrepentant. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You’re expected to perform above yourself but you’re not allowed to get there. The system’s fucked.’
‘The day Burroughs knows anything about systems there’ll be a blue moon in the sky,’ said Hemingway, ‘rather than a sun. The sun is always there. It was there yesterday. And again today.’
‘Hemingway is fucked,’ growled Burroughs. ‘A guy who spends his spare time blowing away elks is not a well-balanced guy. Face it, the man’s a fruitcake.’
‘Burroughs is a self-destructive little faggot,’ said Hemingway, ‘and everybody knows it.’
‘This is great stuff, Ernie,’ said Burroughs. ‘I’d get it down while you’re still sober and alive.’
An hour later American Davis Cup captain Butch Whitman released a statement aimed at steadying the US camp. He made it clear that he was the captain, that Burroughs’ behaviour had been unacceptable and that there could be no tolerance in such matters. Hemingway was also out of order, he said, in publicly disparaging the sexual orientation of another player. ‘This was not at issue and neither should it be. This is your captain speaking.’
Whitman also had a problem with the other young sparring partner, Jerry Salinger, who burst upon the scene when he took out the American Schools Championship and then a fortnight later won the Junior US Open, the only tournament he has played since. Suggestions that he has been here for a week, practising at a private resort in the hills, were quickly dispelled by a statement from his home in Connecticut, saying that he had ‘no interest whatever’ in playing, and would not even watch the event on television. When organisers asked to speak to him, however, they were told he had gone out for a Coke.
‘If he is here,’ said Whitman, ‘I am his captain.’
The weather was beautiful here today as the qualifying matches were completed and the champagne opening was declared a huge success.
The full draw in both the men’s and women’s singles was posted early this evening. Unfortunately world number 6 American Gary Cooper has withdrawn from the tournament because ‘there’s something I’ve got to do’. Otherwise the big news was the drawing of powerful Austrian Gustav Mahler to play Tony Chekhov in a first-round match which will no doubt attract a huge audience.
Organisers are also expected to announce a first-round bye following the mercurial Belgian René Magritte’s claim that he had already conducted his opening match on a train.
‘This is not possible,’ said tournament referee Charles Darwin.
‘It is possible,’ Magritte replied. ‘I have a picture of it.’
‘This is not within the rules of a tennis tournament.’
‘This is not a tennis tournament,’ he replied.
‘And get that bag off your head,’ said Darwin. ‘You’re not funny.’
‘I beg to differ,’ said the unassuming Belgian.
Round 1
Day 2
Bernhardt v. Blyton • Baker v. Lillie • Toulouse-Lautrec v. József • Duchamp v. Milne • Sartre v. Ellington • Einstein v. Arp • Hitchcock v. Waller • Maugham v. Fields • Thorndike v. Klein • Astor v. Millay • Luxemburg v. Riefenstahl • Wodehouse v. Scriabin • Fermi v. Toscanini • Joyce v. Bartók
Friedrich Nietzsche, president and CEO of Nike, put it well
