The fact remains that very few other English players could take a game by the scruff of the neck the way Forster did this afternoon for the first set and a half. Pirandello fought back in the second, which he won 6–4 before asking if the line judges wanted to play, since, he said, there seemed no reason why they shouldn’t.
‘Quiet please, Mr Pirandello,’ said the umpire. ‘The crowd has come here to see you.’
‘The crowd has come here to see whatever occurs,’ said Pirandello.
‘They have come to see you two play,’ said the umpire.
‘Do we need a ball?’ asked Pirandello.
‘Of course you need a ball,’ said the umpire. ‘Tennis is a ball game.’
‘Ah! But could they not imagine a ball?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Forster, ‘everybody might imagine a different ball. That, surely, is the reason we are using a real ball.’
‘You’re a big help, Ted,’ said Pirandello. ‘I don’t go around poking holes in your half-baked ideas. I’ll thank you to stay out of it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Forster. ‘I think you’ll find the rules are clear on this point.’
‘You’re about as radical as a chocolate frog. The first time the rules look threatened, you’re in there defending them.’
‘Rubbish,’ replied Forster.
‘Why don’t you just tell the officials you’re gay?’ asked Pirandello.
‘I do. In private.’
What a pity that young Arthur Miller and perennial favourite Henri Matisse had to come up against one another. The American took the first set easily, setting his points up well, manoeuvring Matisse out of position and making it look elementary. As somebody said, it was the best mix of brains and power we’ve seen so far. Matisse lifted in the second, however, scrambling for everything to stay in the match. Miller won the third in a tiebreak but Matisse came back again and the fourth set was the pick of the litter. Miller threw everything at it and Matisse, who came to the net only three times all day, slowly took control from the baseline, hitting a purple patch at 0–4 down and getting it to 6–6. When he won the set in a tie-break the crowd erupted.
In the final set there was only one service break, Matisse hitting four consecutive winners from Miller’s rocketry to go to 4–2 and that was the match. It is a good thing that Miller is playing doubles. He is a very impressive young man.
Ludwig Wittgenstein taught himself to play while in the army and has come from nowhere to take his country’s number 1 Davis Cup singles berth from Kurt Gödel. A handful for many on the tour because of his unusual behaviour, Wittgenstein apologises when he wins a match and questions line calls when he feels he has been given an unfair advantage. Some players have accused him of doing this to disrupt the rhythm of the match.
‘This is quite true,’ says Wittgenstein. ‘I do it in order to break my concentration. I’m sorry if others are affected. Perhaps I will retire. You’re not writing this down, are you?’
William Carlos Williams did little wrong against him in the first set, produced pure poetry in the second and looked invincible at 5–0 in the third. What Wittgenstein had been doing up until this point was not clear but he broke Williams to love and took the next six games and the final three sets with an astonishing array of shots against which it was impossible to mount any kind of defence.
Wittgenstein said he was ‘not pleased’ with the way he played today and lodged a formal protest over the result. ‘Williams won more games than I did. It seems grossly unfair that he should lose.’
Day 6
Miller v. Lardner • Berryman v. Hecht • Grosz v. Prokofiev • Strindberg v. Hardy • Stein v. Hari • Stephen-Woolf v. Schiaparelli • Canetti v. Beckett
Two hours before Glenn Miller’s match started this morning, a huge crowd, many wearing wartime regalia, waited patiently at Court 6. ‘We used to hear him on the radio but, no, we’ve never seen him play live,’ enthused a man in an old army cap. ‘I’m from Idaho,’ said a woman with a number on her back.
When Miller came out with his opponent Ring Lardner the place went mad. Hats were tossed in the air, whistles were blown and several couples had to be restrained from dancing on the court. It must be said the crowd’s interest in the tennis was less than forensic. It didn’t matter what their man did, they cheered. He won the first set and they went wild. In the second he lost his way and they went just as wild. Lardner, playing beautifully now, took the next two and the match, and the crowd went wild again.
The thing about Miller is that he can be moving in completely the wrong direction and his people don’t care, their heads are bobbing with the rhythm. He can play the same shot six or seven times in a row; they don’t care. He can, as he did at one point, just stand there shuffling his feet for a while, and they all stand up and shuffle their feet. No crowd ever left a court happier and their man had just been defeated.
Lardner is a class act and might ruffle a few feathers here. Miller had no excuses. ‘I was going along all right. I just went missing. I don’t know what went wrong.’
John Berryman turned up this morning wearing someone else’s clothing and clutching a racquet lent to him by the child of a concierge. His opponent Ben Hecht walked him around a bit and gave him plenty of water before the match started, and then Berryman reeled off ten straight games. He was sharp, he moved well, he had it on a string. Hecht had to resign himself to wait. The steam went out of the Berryman serve at about 2-all in the third and he began to lose interest. The longer the match went, the more
